here's this winter, there's that spring, I shall recall what you forget. And though the debate may run another hundred thousand years: What is Love? perhaps we may find that love is the ability of someone to give us back to us. Maybe love is someone seeing and remembering handing us back to ourselves just a trifle better than we had dared to hope or dream…
«I am family memory and, one day perhaps, racial memory, too, but in the round, and at your call. I do not
She went on around the table, clearing away, sorting and stacking, neither grossly humble nor arthritic with pride.
«What do I know?
«This, above all: the trouble with most families with many children is someone gets lost. There isn't time, it seems, for everyone. Well, I will give equally to all of you. I will share out my knowledge and attention with everyone. I wish to be a great warm pie fresh from the oven, with equal shares to be taken by all. No one will starve. Look! someone cries, and I'll look. Listen! someone cries, and I hear. Run with me on the river path! someone says, and I run. And at dusk I am not tired, nor irritable, so I do not scold out of some tired irritability. My eye stays clear, my voice strong, my hand firm, my attention constant.»
«But,» said Father, his voice fading, half convinced, but pi: tting up a last faint argument, «you're not
«If paying attention is love, I am love. If knowing is love, I am love. If helping you not to fall into error and to be good is love, I am love.
«And again, to repeat, there are four of you. Each, in a way never possible before in history, will get my complete attention. No matter if you all speak at once, I can channel and hear this one and that arid the other, clearly. No one will go hungry. I will, if you please, and accept the strange word, „love“ you all.»
«I
And even Grandma turned now to see her standing in the door.
«I won't give you permission, you can't, you mustn't!» said Agatha. «I won't let you! It's lies! You lie. No one loves me. She said she did, but she lied. She
«Agatha!» cried Father, standing up.
«She?» said Grandma. «Who?»
«Mother!» came the shriek. «Said: Love you! Lies! Love you! Lies! And you're like her! You lie. But you're empty, anyway, and so that's a
Agatha spun about and leapt down the hall.
The front door slammed wide.
Father was in motion, but Grandma touched his arm.
«Let me.»
And she walked and then moved swiftly, gliding down the hall and then suddenly, easily, running,
It was a champion sprint by the time we all reached the lawn, the sidewalk, yelling.
Blind, Agatha made the curb, wheeling about, seeing us close, all of us yelling, Grandma way ahead, shouting, too, and Agatha off the curb and out in the street, halfway to the middle, then the middle and suddenly a car, which no one saw, erupting its brakes, its horn shrieking and Agatha flailing about to see and Grandma there with her and hurling her aside and down as the car with fantastic energy and verve selected her from our midst, struck our wonderful electric
Guido Fantoccini-produced dream even while she paced upon the air and, hands up to ward off, almost in mild protest, still trying to decide what to say to this bestial machine, over and over she spun and down and away even as the car jolted to a halt and I saw Agatha safe beyond and Grandma, it seemed, still coming down or down and sliding fifty yards away to strike and ricochet and lie strewn and all of us frozen in a line suddenly in the midst of the street with one scream pulled out of all our throats at the same raw instant.
Then silence and just Agatha lying on the asphalt, intact, getting ready to sob.
And still we did not move, frozen on the sill of death, afraid to venture in any direction, afraid to go see what lay beyond the car and Agatha and so we began to wail and, I guess, pray to ourselves as Father stood amongst us: Oh, no, no, we mourned, oh no, God, no, no…
Agatha lifted her already grief-stricken face and it was the face of someone who has predicted dooms and lived to see and now did not want to see or live any more. As we watched, she turned her gaze to the tossed woman's body and tears fell from her eyes. She shut them and covered them and lay back down forever to weep…
I took a step and then another step and then five quick steps and by the time I reached my sister her head was buried deep and her sobs came up out of a place so far down in her I was afraid I could never find her again, she would never come out, no matter how I pried or pleaded or promised or threatened or just plain said. And what little we could hear from Agatha buried there in her own misery, she said over and over again, lamenting, wounded, certain of the old threat known and named and now here forever. «… like I said… told you… lies… lies… liars… all lies… like the other… other… just like… just… just like the other… other… other…!»
I was down on my knees holding onto her with both hands, trying to put her back together even though she wasn't broken any way you could see but just feel, because I knew it was no use going on to Grandma, no use at all, so I just touched Agatha and gentled her and wept while Father came up and stood over and knelt down with me and it was like a prayer meeting in the middle of the street and lucky no more cars coming, and I said, choking, «Other what, Ag, other
Agatha exploded two words. «Other dead!» «You mean Mom?»
«O Mom,» she wailed, shivering, lying down, cuddling up like a baby. «O Mom, dead, O Mom and now Grandma dead, she promised always, always, to love, to love, promised to be different, promised, promised and now look, look… I hate her, I hate Mom, I hate her, I hate
«Of course,» said a voice. «It's only natural. How foolish of me not to have known, not to have seen.»
And the voice was so familiar we were all stricken. We all jerked. Agatha squinched her eyes, flicked them wide, blinked, and jerked half up, staring.
«How silly of me,» said Grandma, standing there at the edge of our circle, our prayer, our wake. «Grandma!» we all said.
And she stood there, taller by far than any of us in this moment of kneeling and holding and crying out. We could only stare up at her in disbelief.
«You're dead!» cried Agatha. «The car—»
«Hit me,» said Grandma, quietly. «Yes. And threw me in the air and tumbled me over and for a few moments there was a severe concussion of circuitries. I might have feared a disconnection, if fear is the word. But then I sat up and gave myself a shake and the few molecules of paint, jarred loose on one printed path or another, magnetized back in position and resilient creature that I am, unbreakable thing that I am,
«I thought you were—» said Agatha.
«And only natural,» said Grandma. «I mean, anyone else, hit like that, tossed like that. But, O my dear Agatha, not me. And now I see why you were afraid and never trusted me. You didn't know. And I had not as yet proved my singular ability to survive. How dumb of me not to have thought to show you. Just a second.» Somewhere in her head, her body, her being, she fitted together some invisible tapes, some old information made new by interblending. She nodded. «Yes. There. A book of child-raising, laughed at by some few people years back when the woman who wrote the book said, as final advice to parents: „Whatever you do, don't die. Your children will never forgive you.“»
«Forgive,» some one of us whispered.
«For how can children understand when you just up and go away and never come back again with no excuse, no apologies, no sorry note, nothing.»
«They can't,» I said.
