THE CAVERN OF DEEP HARMONY

 

PART FIFTY-SEVEN:

 

 

The two of them spent a while in the parlor after that and he played several old songs for her, ones his parents used to sing years ago. He knew them all, the music, the words, could hear a song once and then play it, and these particular ones he'd heard countless times, the notes sliding gracefully out from under his mother's fingers. She asked him to sing, too, and he did, pleased that she was herself again enough to be interested. He did When You and I Were Young, Hear the Wind Blow, My Old Kentucky Home, several Stephen Foster ones.

She sat beside him, her head on his shoulder, letting the peace of being beside him slowly fill her empty places. Martha looked in the door, smiled, and went back to her kitchen. Edith took a book into the living room. Ryan had carried Connie up the stairs. Everybody quite purposely left the couple in the parlor alone.

Some time later they moved to the couch. "I like this couch," he said softly, his mouth quirking in a bit of a grin. There were a lot of memories connected with it.

"Was that just yesterday morning you asked me to marry you?"

"No," he replied. "I've loved you since before I knew you were you. No, that's not right, either. Somehow I've always known you were you, I just didn't know who was you or where you were. But I asked you to be mine long ago when we were just sparkles of thought in the mind of God.

I know that's right. I feel the rightness of it."

"I think sometimes," she murmured, leaning close, "that I've come to the furthest reaches of loving you, that I know the all of it and I'm so filled with it the seams of my soul begin to stretch. But I never do. I get to the edges of what I know of loving you and I find it's not an edge at all."  She sighed contentedly, rubbing her cheek lightly over his beard. "It just goes on and on and on...and I can't even begin to grasp the vastness of it. I...I've never known anything like this at all, Marshall. I've never known what it's like not to have a horizon where something ends." She kissed his chin. "There are days when the blue of the sea and the blue of the sky are so the same that the water fades into the air, merges with it with no visible line, and the ocean doesn't end and the sky doesn't begin. It's like that. It just...goes and never stops, is never contained, never has boundaries."

He startled her slightly by whispering, "Sight," and turning his head away.

"What, darling? Oh, I'm sorry. I guess I use too many purely visual images."

He put his palm across his eyes and leaned his face forward.

"What? What is it?"

"I don't know what it is, Eden. What it was."  He lifted his head, turning it toward her. "Something. Some sort of...something."

"When? What do you mean, sweetheart?"

"Last night. Something."

"Last night?"

"When the sleigh tipped. Something."

"When you hit the road? Is that what you mean?"

"Just after that...then."

"After? But...."

"I know, but that's what I mean."

She pressed her hand to her mouth. What was he talking about? After he hit the road, his heart stopped. How could there be something?

"I...," he began, faltering, searching for words.

"Something happened after...after...?"

He nodded. "I think so. It was all so confusing. I didn't know what was happening, what had happened. Everything was...different."

"Different how?"

"I can't describe it. There were...things."

"Things?"

"Yes...things. Around me, close to me. I knew they were there."

"That's good, isn't it, knowing they were there?"

"But I couldn't feel them, Eden. I couldn't hear them. But I knew they were there."

Her brow knit. She had no idea what he meant. "What sort of things?"

"Shapes. Some kind of...shapes."  He shook his head. "I guess they were shapes. I don't know."

"Shapes? Like what? People?"

"I don't think so. It was so...different. I knew they were there and I didn't touch them. They weren't making any noise. But they were there."

"Big?"

"I didn't seem to know what big was. They were just...there. I remember it being ok somehow. It was...odd...but it didn't really bother me." He shook his head again as though trying to clear it so he could grasp what he needed to communicate to her...to himself.

She could see plainly that it was bothering him. Whatever it was, if it hadn't bothered him then, it was bothering him now. "You were lying in the snow. Could it have just been the snow that was around you?"

"I don't think that was it. It was...different. And I was moving through it."

"Moving?"  He hadn't moved at all there in the snow. He was dead. He couldn't move. Her eyes suddenly widened. Good God! Could that be it? "Remember, darling, there in the mud when you couldn't breathe and you said for a moment you felt this sense of detachment, like you were just about to float away but didn't because I started beating your back?"

He clamped his tongue between his lips. "You think...?"

She nodded. "It's possible. Was there anything else, anything at all?"

"Punctures. There were lots of little punctures."

"In you? Was something poking at you?"

"Not like that, no. They were around me, above me. Little punctures."

Punctures? What could he mean by that? What would seem like punctures to him? "Close to you?"

"I don't know, Eden. I couldn't tell. They were just there, like this space I live in all the time had been pierced from somewhere outside. I have no idea what they were, what could do that." Again he shook his head. "They were just...there," he repeated.

"And you knew they were there?"

He nodded.

"But you didn't touch them?"

"I didn't touch them, no."

"Or hear them?"

"No."

"Marshall?"

"What?"

"Did you see them?"

His whole body jerked slightly. "That...that couldn't be what...seeing...is? Could it?"

"I don't know, darling. Something happened in that moment that your heart stopped. Maybe it was."

"But the punctures? I don't understand the punctures."

"You keep calling them that, Marshall. But what if...what if they were stars?"

His lips parted and his breathing grew rapid, shallow. "No. I don't...."

"Why not? Remember that study you told me about?"

"But...in the mud...I didn't...."

"You didn't die in the mud."

"But...."

"Think about it. The 'somethings'. What if they were the big evergreens that grow all along the lake road?"

"Like...that? An evergreen is like...that?"

"Well, maybe in the night it could seem like that. And then above them would be the stars. It was nearly midnight and the clouds were almost gone. I remember watching the stars as we drove along."

"But I didn't think stars were...."

"Like punctures? Weren't there old stories from ancient peoples who thought the stars were holes in the sky and the light shone through from the other side? Wasn't there something like that?"

He nodded, then buried his face in his hands. "I don't think I...." 

She slid her arms around his back, realizing the truth of what Edith had said. Marshall was the one who'd died. He had his own issues to deal with. She'd better buck up and stop thinking about herself and think more about what he needed. She could see this was huge for him. He seemed absolutely shocked. If it were true and he'd seen for that small moment in time, it had been night and everything was shaded and shadowed, the colors barely there. The evergreens would seem foreign, especially if one were right in them. And stars...how did one understand what starlight was when one had no visual experience, had had no chance to develop the concepts that sighted people took so for granted? And it had all been very brief.  She found herself not wanting him to think that was all there was to sight. But, then, how would he handle even that little oblique brush with it? She didn't want him changed by it. Oh, God! Not that! He was so content in how it was he had to go through the world. That couldn't be taken away from him. It just couldn't!

"Marshall?"

His face was still in his hands and she could feel a slight trembling in his shoulders as he strained to come to terms with this experience. "Stars?" he was repeating. "Stars?"  He shook his head. "It can't be. I was so...wrong." A shudder went completely through him. Had he been wrong about everything? Suddenly the world was an unfamiliar place. If that was what stars were like...if that was how people whose eyes weren't 'broken' knew they were there...then what was there he had been right about? Something like a small moan escaped his lips.

No, she thought, no. She didn't want the tables turned like this. Not like this! She didn't want him to be the one who was left suffering and in pain because of what happened last night. What had he said? He'd been so wrong? Yes, that was it. He hadn't known about the stars. How
could he know what they were like? Damn, damn, damn!

She got up and crouched in front of him, taking his face between both her hands and saying his name strongly, firmly. When his attention seemed to have moved to her, she removed her hands from his face, picked both of his up and placed them on either side of her own face.

"Describe me."

"What?"

"Describe me. Right now. Describe me."

"Oh, Eden, I...."

"Now. Right now."

He sighed. "You're beautiful, all inside you're beautiful. And you know how to love and love and not let go. You won't stop. You see something you have to do and you manage to do it no matter how hard it is, like getting me out of that stream of mud or tracking all the way through that
forest in the cold."

"More," she urged.

"Dogs like you. That's because of your loyal heart and the natural goodness of who you are." He seemed to be forgetting a little about what he'd been getting lost in, was concentrating on what she'd asked of him. "And you've been sad a lot. You have Edith and Connie, but part of you hurts still because people who should have been there for you...weren't...and that's made you a little unsure about trusting life. You're smart, smarter than even you know, and you understand a lot about people and you know how to put it down in words."

"And?"

"You like it when there's just the two of us. You liked it when you and Connie had shared times growing up, when not a lot of other kids were around. And you adore Edith because she's the one who has been there for you. You've always wished she were your mother, and, to all intents and purposes, she is."

"And?"

"And you want to be happy. You want to love me. But it frightens you. You fight so hard to make it all right, but it still frightens you, especially when there's nothing to fight. You're really strong inside when you've got that something there to battle but if it's not there, then you've only got hurt left and...."

"You know me, don't you?"

He nodded. "It's important. It's who you are and I love who you are."

"Does red hair matter?"

"What?"

"Does red hair matter? You didn't mention that I have red hair or that I weigh, well, no matter what I weigh. You described who I am, what makes me me, not what color my hair is. I know you know it's auburn, but does it matter? Isn't what matters that I am consumed with love for you, waking, sleeping, and that all that I am, all that matters, is known to you, understood by you?"

"Where are you going with this, darling?"

"Are you wrong?"

"Wrong?"

"Yes, are you wrong about your concept of me?"

"I don't...."

"Has anything about your concept of me...changed? Since last night, has it changed?"

He shook his head.

"Is everything important still the same?"

"You...are...everything important."

She smiled. God, how she loved him! "Do I love you less than last night?"

Now he smiled slightly. "I think maybe you love me more."

"Let me tell you something," she continued. "I do love you more. You do that to me. You. Who you are, who you've been, who you'll become. You. Everything about you, everything in you. I love that, I love all of that, everything that goes into making Marshall Marshall. You are so much more than anything I ever dreamed of and that you love me is a constant amazement and joy to me. And, darling, you know about stars. Not only do you know all the natural and scientific reasons they're there, but you understand the essence of them the same way you understand the essence of me. You understand the meaning of them and how the human heart responds to them in thoughts and words made into poetry and prose. I think how vast the number of people there are who don't care about the stars, who pay no attention to them, don't have the capacity to appreciate them. But you do. I've read things you've written about them... and you're right on. You know how to capture the heart of a star. That's what matters. Just like with me. I know you know me and when you describe me, you describe who I am, not that my hair is red. I could dye it purple tomorrow and all the things you said about me would still be true. You know me, you've captured the heart of me."

She lifted herself up enough to kiss him. "Just a bit ago Aunt Edith helped me understand about what matters. I'd let it start to slip through my fingers, and she showed me how to cup them back into a bowl and hold on, how to keep what's important where it belongs. I know this is a big deal for you, darling, but foundationally you're not wrong about things. You're really not. Your concept of things is so much more beautiful, so much more 'right' because you see to the heart of it all. Don't do what I was doing, darling. Don't lose anything, don't lose any part of yourself and let precious things slip away."

She laughed a wry little laugh. "Listen to me, sounding like Edith. I think she must've gotten to me even more than I realized. But all I know, darling, is that this is right. You are who you are, how you are, and I find the package of you entirely wonderful."  Then she did laugh at the double meaning. "Well, that, too! But not only that. I love absolutely everything that's gone into making you Marshall. And your concept of the world is part of that, a wonderful, beautiful part of that. I adore your concepts. You're not wrong. You're not. Just be you. Just let me love you. You. That's who I want to love. Can we do that? Can we both not let the sleigh ride change us so that we've lost something? We already had everything that's important, everything that matters? Can't we hold onto it? Can't I take you upstairs and unwrap that package?"

She made him laugh. He hadn't expected to laugh, not right now, but she did it. And she was offering him love with both her hands. It was what he wanted. He knew he had more thinking to do about last night, but she'd made him put it in better perspective. There were concepts...and then there was death.  Death rendered star concepts irrelevant. But he was here and she was here and he reached out literally and took the intangibility of her offering into his hands, merged it with his own, and offered it back to her. That was the way of it and he knew his concept of that was absolutely spot on.

"Did you say something about a package?"

 

 

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