out in the open at last.
With legs that feel heavy and numb as posts, she staggers rapidly away from his reach, letting her breath out carefully, her chest shuddering with it, the sound audible. In her ears the tension in the room is discernible, the sound as high-pitched as the wind’s wild screamthrough the tall black pines that surround the cabin. Her head filled with its whine and keen, her heart swelling to fill her chest and throat and mouth, she stares down, voiceless, in slowly growing belief, at her husband’s body.
The Promise of Heaven
Iris’s eyes snap open into the half-light of her bedroom, the awareness that it’s morning and she has to get up as immediate as consciousness is. She feels exhausted and strained, yet no dream, no echo of the passing of the night lingers. Something is tugging at her memory though, but whatever it is refuses to dredge itself up and confront her. The room’s shadows are lucid but convey no information. She waits motionless inside the cool sandwich of sheets for that phantom just out of her view to come into focus, glimpses its craggy, horrifying shape, holds back, then edges her hand out to feel the blank sheet beside her, as the spectre moves into reach and slowly encompasses her.
Barney is dead. It’s the day of his funeral. She has wakened this morning a widow, she doesn’t have a husband any more; she can’t quite believe it and would laugh, just a quick snort of surprise, except that she knows she mustn’t laugh because it isn’t funny. If she laughs, she knows she won’t be forgiven. Forgiven for what? For laughing, she tells herself, then, irritated with the nonsense she’s babbling to herself, she wobbles her head back and forth briskly on the cold pillow to clear it out. The room rotates rapidly on an angle, and she holds still until, with scarcely perceptible swishes and thumps, it settles back into place around her.
She sees Barney clearly as she and Luke found him only three days ago, that dear body lying on the old davenport, one arm stretched above his head, his eyes closed, his expression calm. It occurs to her that Luke might have closed his eyes. Had he screamed as death descended on him? Or had the blood vessel in his brain swelled and burst while he was peacefully asleep —
I’ve got to stop this, she tells herself, and lies still, waiting for the full knowledge of his death to overtake her. She tries to call up his face, his straight nose like Luke’s, his thick, golden-brown hair, but even that won’t come and her inability to mourn, even to feel her love for him, makes her uneasy and faintly shocked at herself. All she has that might be called sorrow is an emptiness in her chest that takes up all the space and makes it hard to breathe.
She thinks of other widows she’s known: Poor Marie Chapuis who couldn’t manage a coherent word all through the funeral and the reception for sobbing and had to be led away by relatives, Gladys Warkentin who sat frozen-faced and silent, young Melody Friesen who talked and laughed and then stared into space with eyes so deep nobody could look at them. The thought that today she will have to find a way to be a widow makes her automatically push back the covers and get out of bed.
The room’s too cold. She goes to the closet and takes out Barney’s dressing gown, a thick, deep wine velour that he refused to wear because, he said, it made him feel silly. Said it in such a helpless, baffled, and yet pained way that Iris who had given it to him had to laugh at this display of his untempered maleness, and stopped nagging him to put it on, even if she couldn’t understand what it was that bothered him about it.
She slides her arms into it, wraps it around herself as tightly as it will go, and ties the belt in a knot, then pulls the wide collar snugly up around her neck. It feels warm against her skin, its heaviness comforts her, and the assertive way it flaps against her ankles. On Barney it was knee-length.
With legs that feel heavy and numb as posts, she staggers rapidly away from his reach, letting her breath out carefully, her chest shuddering with it, the sound audible. In her ears the tension in the room is discernible, the sound as high-pitched as the wind’s wild screamthrough the tall black pines that surround the cabin. Her head filled with its whine and keen, her heart swelling to fill her chest and throat and mouth, she stares down, voiceless, in slowly growing belief, at her husband’s body.
The Promise of Heaven
Iris’s eyes snap open into the half-light of her bedroom, the awareness that it’s morning and she has to get up as immediate as consciousness is. She feels exhausted and strained, yet no dream, no echo of the passing of the night lingers. Something is tugging at her memory though, but whatever it is refuses to dredge itself up and confront her. The room’s shadows are lucid but convey no information. She waits motionless inside the cool sandwich of sheets for that phantom just out of her view to come into focus, glimpses its craggy, horrifying shape, holds back, then edges her hand out to feel the blank sheet beside her, as the spectre moves into reach and slowly encompasses her.
Barney is dead. It’s the day of his funeral. She has wakened this morning a widow, she doesn’t have a husband any more; she can’t quite believe it and would laugh, just a quick snort of surprise, except that she knows she mustn’t laugh because it isn’t funny. If she laughs, she knows she won’t be forgiven. Forgiven for what? For laughing, she tells herself, then, irritated with the nonsense she’s babbling to herself, she wobbles her head back and forth briskly on the cold pillow to clear it out. The room rotates rapidly on an angle, and she holds still until, with scarcely perceptible swishes and thumps, it settles back into place around her.
She sees Barney clearly as she and Luke found him only three days ago, that dear body lying on the old davenport, one arm stretched above his head, his eyes closed, his expression calm. It occurs to her that Luke might have closed his eyes. Had he screamed as death descended on him? Or had the blood vessel in his brain swelled and burst while he was peacefully asleep —
I’ve got to stop this, she tells herself, and lies still, waiting for the full knowledge of his death to overtake her. She tries to call up his face, his straight nose like Luke’s, his thick, golden-brown hair, but even that won’t come and her inability to mourn, even to feel her love for him, makes her uneasy and faintly shocked at herself. All she has that might be called sorrow is an emptiness in her chest that takes up all the space and makes it hard to breathe.
She thinks of other widows she’s known: Poor Marie Chapuis who couldn’t manage a coherent word all through the funeral and the reception for sobbing and had to be led away by relatives, Gladys Warkentin who sat frozen-faced and silent, young Melody Friesen who talked and laughed and then stared into space with eyes so deep nobody could look at them. The thought that today she will have to find a way to be a widow makes her automatically push back the covers and get out of bed.
The room’s too cold. She goes to the closet and takes out Barney’s dressing gown, a thick, deep wine velour that he refused to wear because, he said, it made him feel silly. Said it in such a helpless, baffled, and yet pained way that Iris who had given it to him had to laugh at this display of his untempered maleness, and stopped nagging him to put it on, even if she couldn’t understand what it was that bothered him about it.
She slides her arms into it, wraps it around herself as tightly as it will go, and ties the belt in a knot, then pulls the wide collar snugly up around her neck. It feels warm against her skin, its heaviness comforts her, and the assertive way it flaps against her ankles. On Barney it was knee-length.
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