from anything and everything that reminded him of her, so he took a job with a wholesale stationery house, operating in the Chicago area. For the past five years he had remained in that business, though the concerns he worked for changed rather frequently. Each one, for a short while, was a fine company headed by men it was a privilege to work for. This opinion was eventually and inevitably revised, until a point was reached where Mr. Peters, for his own good, could no longer afford to work for such bastards. As a rule he quit before he was fired.
When Mr. Peters stopped on the cemetery path to light a cigarette, Lymie stopped also, his eyes busy with the mounded graves, the faded American flags in their star-shaped holders, and the tombstones, row after row of them, all saying the same thing:
Henry Burdine died
… Mary
his wife died
…
Samuel Potter died
…
Jesse Davis died
…
Temperance his wife died
…
“You get out of life,” Mr. Peters said as they walked on, “just what you put into it.”
Mrs. Peters’ grave was at the far end of the cemetery, in a square lot with a plain granite tombstone on it about six feet high. On the stone was the single name
Harris.
Two small headstones marked the graves of Lymie’s maternal grandfather and grandmother. A little apart from them were two other graves, one full-sized and one small, as if for a child. The inscription on the headstone of the larger grave said
Alma Harris Peters 1881-1919.
Lymie set the Mason jar down and tore both string and paper off the box, which contained a dozen short-stemmed redroses. He tried to arrange them nicely in the Mason jar but the wind blew them all the same way and he caught the jar with his hand, just before it toppled. By bracing it against the headstone, in a little hollow, he could keep the jar from falling, but there was nothing he could do about the roses.
“Quit worrying with them,” Mr. Peters said. “They look all right.”
He stood with his hat in his hand, staring in a troubled way at the grave.
Lymie was embarrassed because he had no particular feeling, and he thought he ought to have. He looked down at the low mound with dead grass on it and tried to visualize his mother beneath it, in a horizontal position; tried to feel toward that spot the emotion he used to have for her. He waited, knowing that in a moment his father would ask the question he always asked when they came here.
Though Lymie could remember his mother’s voice easily enough, and how she did her hair, and what it was like to be in the same room with her, he couldn’t remember her face. He had tried too many times to remember it and now it was gone. It wouldn’t come back any more.
On the other side of the lot the ground dropped away abruptly. The cemetery ran along the end of a high bluff from which you could look off over the tops of trees to the cornfields and the flat prairie beyond. In the whole winter landscape the roses were the only color.
“Your mother has been gone five years,” Mr. Peters said, “and I still can’t believe it. It just doesn’t seem possible.”
Lymie remembered how his mother used to say his father’s name:
Lymon,
she said,
my Lymon
—proudly, and always with love.
He remembered the excitement of meeting his mother suddenly on the stairs. And the sound of her voice. And the soft side of her neck. And the imprint of her lips on the top of his head after she had kissed him. And being rocked by her sometimes, on her lap, when he had been crying. And being allowed to look at her beautiful long white kid gloves.
He remembered waking at night and realizing that she had been in his room without his knowing it—that room he remembered so clearly and that fitted his heart and mind like a glove. The bed he woke up in, and the dresser with all his clothes in it, and the blue and white wallpaper, and the light switch by the door, and the light, and next to it the framed letter which began
Dear Madam I have been shown in
When Mr. Peters stopped on the cemetery path to light a cigarette, Lymie stopped also, his eyes busy with the mounded graves, the faded American flags in their star-shaped holders, and the tombstones, row after row of them, all saying the same thing:
Henry Burdine died
… Mary
his wife died
…
Samuel Potter died
…
Jesse Davis died
…
Temperance his wife died
…
“You get out of life,” Mr. Peters said as they walked on, “just what you put into it.”
Mrs. Peters’ grave was at the far end of the cemetery, in a square lot with a plain granite tombstone on it about six feet high. On the stone was the single name
Harris.
Two small headstones marked the graves of Lymie’s maternal grandfather and grandmother. A little apart from them were two other graves, one full-sized and one small, as if for a child. The inscription on the headstone of the larger grave said
Alma Harris Peters 1881-1919.
Lymie set the Mason jar down and tore both string and paper off the box, which contained a dozen short-stemmed redroses. He tried to arrange them nicely in the Mason jar but the wind blew them all the same way and he caught the jar with his hand, just before it toppled. By bracing it against the headstone, in a little hollow, he could keep the jar from falling, but there was nothing he could do about the roses.
“Quit worrying with them,” Mr. Peters said. “They look all right.”
He stood with his hat in his hand, staring in a troubled way at the grave.
Lymie was embarrassed because he had no particular feeling, and he thought he ought to have. He looked down at the low mound with dead grass on it and tried to visualize his mother beneath it, in a horizontal position; tried to feel toward that spot the emotion he used to have for her. He waited, knowing that in a moment his father would ask the question he always asked when they came here.
Though Lymie could remember his mother’s voice easily enough, and how she did her hair, and what it was like to be in the same room with her, he couldn’t remember her face. He had tried too many times to remember it and now it was gone. It wouldn’t come back any more.
On the other side of the lot the ground dropped away abruptly. The cemetery ran along the end of a high bluff from which you could look off over the tops of trees to the cornfields and the flat prairie beyond. In the whole winter landscape the roses were the only color.
“Your mother has been gone five years,” Mr. Peters said, “and I still can’t believe it. It just doesn’t seem possible.”
Lymie remembered how his mother used to say his father’s name:
Lymon,
she said,
my Lymon
—proudly, and always with love.
He remembered the excitement of meeting his mother suddenly on the stairs. And the sound of her voice. And the soft side of her neck. And the imprint of her lips on the top of his head after she had kissed him. And being rocked by her sometimes, on her lap, when he had been crying. And being allowed to look at her beautiful long white kid gloves.
He remembered waking at night and realizing that she had been in his room without his knowing it—that room he remembered so clearly and that fitted his heart and mind like a glove. The bed he woke up in, and the dresser with all his clothes in it, and the blue and white wallpaper, and the light switch by the door, and the light, and next to it the framed letter which began
Dear Madam I have been shown in
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