Digging Out (11 page)

“Alys.”

I keep my hands there and shake my head. After all the weeks and months of shouting in the kitchen, I can’t listen anymore.

“Alys. I don’t think your da was to blame. But it’s complicated.”

I keep shaking my head.

“It’s just that we need Parry, and it seems like he’s given up.”

I was glad Cram came in then and offered us tea.

At the end of June, eight months after the disaster, we finally hear the findings of the investigation:

“ ‘Blame for the Aberfan disaster rests upon the National Coal Board. This blame is shared, though in varying degrees, between the NCB headquarters and the South Western Divisional Board,’ ” Gram reads me from the Echo. “So that’s that,” she says, patting my knee before continuing.

“ ‘There was a total absence of tipping policy and this was the basic cause of the disaster.

“ ‘Our strong and unanimous view is that the Aberfan disaster could and should have been prevented. We are not unmindful of the fact that strong words of calumny have been used against the NCB and a few of its employees. But our report tells not of wickedness but of ignorance, ineptitude and a complete breakdown in communication.’ ”

S
ANTA
M
ONICA,
C
ALIFORNIA
D
ECEMBER 2002

T
he Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
says that in the first forty-four days after a death, one must think wonderful thoughts about the deceased. One must do good deeds in the name of the dead. Lucky for Marc, forty-four days have long passed. If he weren’t already dead I would kill him.

I go through Marc’s drawers looking for something that will give me the truth. Now he’s a stranger. Nine years of lies and deceits. I feel mortified, remembering how I once wanted to tell a friend whose husband was having an affair, “You don’t know because you don’t want to know.” Either my self-absorption has been stunning or Marc was a bloody good actor. How could I not have known about Gabriella? And a child, for God’s sake —how could he? Knowing my pathological reaction to abandonment, how could Marc, of all people, do such a thing not only to me, but to our children?

I find his frequent flyer miles. He has 339,876 on American Airlines, and half that many on Continental and Delta.

Does the child look like Hannah? Shit, this is just unbelievable. I feel so used. So ashamed. My God, what will Dafydd think? Marc was his idol.

I find a handwritten list of all the securities we have. Was he counting up our assets? Marc has also noted the money Evan sends me for Dafydd and the five hundred dollars I send to my mam and da each month. Maybe he was trying to figure out how to split things up. Maybe he was going to ask me for a divorce.

I try to think back to the way he acted when he returned from his Brazilian trips, or at least the last one. But it’s all a blank.

Does the child look like Marc? In the moment I can’t even seem to conjure up Marc’s face.

Conversations come to mind: “I wish I didn’t have to be away for so long. … I wish you and Hannah could come with me. We could rent a little place in Bahia for a week or two …” What if I’d said yes? What if I’d gone? I think about whom I can tell. There is no one I want to know. Not Beti. Not Elodie. Not even Elizabeth, who knows everything about me. This is too shameful, unspeakable. Another person might go to a therapist, spill out this ugly, bilious secret shame. But not me. I will keep my mouth closed so the sludge will not drown me.

I hate Phillipe, because he knows the real story. He would have seen them together through the years. A wave of nausea passes through me and I feel like I might faint. I crash through the French doors to the small deck outside Marc’s office. The waterfall I had built for his thirty-fifth birthday is on. I splash some water on my face.

I imagine Marc and Gabby in some romantic little beach house in Ipanema, the baby running on the sand, Marc watching from the porch, Gabby with her long black hair and low-cut dress on his lap. I imagine Marc holding Gabby, telling her how much he loves her.

The first time Marc invited me to Brazil, Hannah was just a few months old. He’d said, “Alys, ‘And Then Came Love’ has won Best Song of the Year on the Brazilian charts. Come with me to the award ceremony.” But I was feeling guilty enough about leaving Hannah to teach a class at UCLA Extension three times a week. Brazil would have meant at least four full days away from her. I was still nursing. Shit, why didn’t I go? It was an award, for Christ’s sake. A big award. I could have taken Hannah. But what could he have been thinking? Surely Gabriella was already pregnant. Perhaps back then he was still looking for a way out of their affair? Maybe my going with him might have changed things.

I picture parties they gave together to which all the Brazilian singers and musicians I’d met through the years must have come. Obsessively I list them: Ivan Lins, Dori Cayummi, Joao Bosco, Oscar Castro Neves, Tio Lima. Their faces come up like portraits on their
CDs. Gabriella in the kitchen throwing together one of her simple pots of fejuada. Latin women have always made me jealous—their ease, their beauty, even their accents. They seem to know some secret way into a man’s psyche. I hate Gabriella for allowing this to happen, for the pain I feel, for what it will do to my children. I could never do this to another woman. Never.

Beti takes Hannah for two days. I stay in the house for most of it, having a “lost” weekend. On Sunday night before dinner, Beti, Colin and the kids drop Hannah back. I have managed to clear out most of the wine bottles and the debris in the fireplace where I have burned most of Marc’s clothes. I open the door and Hannah holds out a Christmas wreath in her arms. When she sees my uncombed hair and shabby pajamas she says, “Mom, have you been in bed all weekend?” She backs away as if I smell or have some contagious disease. She drops the wreath on the coffee table and pulls the drapes wide. Then she opens the windows. “We need a tree. The house is so gloomy and quiet all the time. I can’t stand eating here. Let’s go out for pizza.”

“I don’t like pizza,” I say.

Beti, who has brought in Hannah’s duffel bag, says, “What does it matter? You don’t eat anything anyway. You’ve lost so much weight you’re just skin and bones.”

I look at the skin on my arm and how it droops. I should do some yoga. Maybe run. But so should Beti. She’s gained weight, and her clothes are so maternal. It’s none of Beti’s business how much I weigh.

“Thanks for bringing Hannah home, Beti,” I say as graciously as I can, walking swiftly back toward my bedroom. “We’ve plenty of food in the fridge, Hannah. You’ll find something to eat.”

“I’m calling Dafydd,” she says, storming over to the telephone. “He needs to come home.”

“Don’t you dare, Hannah,” I shout.

“What happened? You’re acting so crazy, Mommy. You’ve been acting crazy for days and days. Weeks. Totally nuts. You’re scaring me.” Hannah starts to cry.

It’s true that, the day before Hannah left with Beti, I broke the dishes Marc’s grandmother had given us when we first started living together. And the day before that I’d taken a pair of scissors to the
Dora Carrington drawing I bought Marc when he turned thirty. Not to mention tearing up the photo of the two of us sitting on the piano at the Ritz taken on our first trip to Paris.

Beti tries to comfort Hannah, but Hannah has never liked to be touched except by people very close to her: me, Dafydd, Marc. My sister doesn’t take rejection well, even from a distraught eight year old. Her expression is sullen as she begrudgingly waves good-bye and too carefully closes the front door.

Of course I won’t tell the children about Gabby. I’m not only too ashamed for myself but also for Hannah. Her father was as unfaithful to her as he was to me. How many other things in my life have I not noticed or ignored or, even worse, missed completely?

Phillipe and Ed Meyers leave messages. I don’t return their calls.

When I close my eyes, I can feel the wet, cold slurry in my nose and mouth. I can’t imagine why I’ve been saved.

Several days later, Hannah asks me if I know CPR.

“If you’d been here that morning, could you have saved Daddy?”

Is this a veiled accusation? I’d like to tell her that knowing what I know now, I would have thumbed my nose and walked away. But I am a better mother than that, if only a little.

Instead I try to comfort her, rise above my own pain. “Everyone did everything humanly possible.” I remember Gram’s comfort when I’d asked her why if God were so great He would have killed Hallie and all my friends. I put my arm around Hannah. “Perhaps Daddy did all the work he’d come to do in this life more quickly than all the rest of us.”

“So where did he go? Where is he now?”

Probably burning in hell for living a double life, I think.

“I don’t know. I don’t really understand that part. Perhaps no one understands that part until it happens to them.”

Hannah comes home from school and tells me she wants to move. She hates all her friends. They are all snobs, she says. They are all mean. There is not one of them she likes. I try to listen calmly.

“I want to move to New York. I want to be near Dafydd.” When I press her for more details, she says that one of her friends said whenever she wants anything, Hannah uses her father’s death to get it. “Sandy says she doesn’t even believe my dad is dead. ‘Your
parents are probably just divorced and he lives somewhere else.’ She thinks I just made it all up.”

The next morning she refuses to go to school. I let her stay home. She seems angry. All morning she stays in the den, watching TV. I wonder if she intuits my complicated, negative feelings and they make her angry.

“I wish Rosie O’Donnell was my mom,” she tells me when I peek in to see how she is doing. “At least she’s good at working everyone’s problems out.” She glares at me.

At eleven a.m. she comes into my office, where I am still in my pajamas pretending to work. “I’ve made myself an almond butter and marmalade sandwich. Can you drive me to school?” Her clear resolve buoys me.

Later, I call Ed and tell him in no uncertain terms to call Gabriella Purdue. “Tell her there is nothing for her in Marc’s will. Nothing. Tell her to leave me alone.”

I shower, put on makeup, go into the kitchen and cut up potatoes, carrots, and onions while a small hen defrosts. I make corn bread stuffing with chili peppers and a yam soufflé, orange and cranberry sauce, sautéed greens with turnips and a double fudge cake. When Hannah comes home from school, I look at the cold bottle of chardonnay standing in the fridge. I don’t open it. Hannah is in her room standing by her stereo. When she sees me outside her door, she comes into my open arms. I hug her close, very close.

A
BERFAN
, W
ALES
A
PRIL 1977

T
he fifth spring after the disaster, the playground is finally finished. It’s at the bottom of the road, below where the school area once stood. The parents’ group lays a lovely lawn and puts in a yellow slide, blue swings and a roundabout. They plant a lot of trees, small and so spindly I don’t see how they will ever live through a winter let alone grow big enough to climb—which is what everybody has in mind. And even if they do, who will climb them? Seems like a waste of money. But Cram says it’s not only for us few left, and the memory of those who perished, but for future generations.

I tell Mam and Da I don’t want to go to the dedication, but they are making me. The whole village is turning out, they say. Gram gives me a small package, and when I open it, there is a pink mohair sweater she has been knitting. It is so pretty, I think it is worth going to the ceremony just to wear it.

When we get to the playground, Da is talking to Mr. Ames and a group of parents. Mam is passing out chocolate biscuits. Cram and I are standing alone. I see Sophie Creenway, who is never very nice. Her long blond hair is done up in a braid with a ribbon running through it. Sophie tells me she likes my sweater. Then she turns her back and looks away. She’s younger than I am and she has a crush on Oscar jeens, who is my age. Oscar Jeens likes Sondra. I don’t care about any of them.

Most evenings now, Evan comes to supper. Gram and I have come to expect him. Sometimes she leaves us alone. We talk about everything and I find myself asking him the most peculiar questions.

“What about your mam and da? Why don’t you see them? They must feel like all the folks here, like they’ve lost you. You could be like Parry, not the same anymore. Don’t you think they worry?”

“Nope,” he says matter-of-factly. “We don’t see eye to eye. That’s why I left. And I’m never going back.”

I want to ask him why they don’t see eye to eye, but his tone suggests it isn’t something he wants to talk about.

“My life is in Aberfan now. No matter how bad it has been here, this is my home forever.”

So many ways Evan and I are different. If I could, I would leave Aberfan tomorrow. I dream about getting away from the terror of that morning. Night rises up in me like a dragon breathing hot fire, the flames licking me, pushing me toward their hot center, ready to swallow me whole. I want to get away from Mam and Da, who, like most of the villagers, stay so stuck in their loss they might as well be up in the cemetery along with the children.

Now the streets are deserted. The only noise the roar and screech of the bulldozers up the mountain as they pull the slag from the killer tip bit by bit, pile by pile into their huge shovels. “The Cleanup,” we call it. Dr. Kowal has come back again and left sedatives for sleeping. Gram hands the little red tablet to me with water, and when I can’t swallow it, she crushes it and mixes it with a spoonful of clotted cream. Even now, at thirteen years old, I still don’t sleep alone, and it is still Gram beside me most nights, her back up against mine. I continue to wake in the middle of the night, screaming.

Everything else has changed. Not just Mam, Da and school. Everything. All the rules. Even the simple things. Before the disaster, every night we’d all have tea together. Now Da doesn’t get home from the pub till late, and by then, Mam has already gone off to bed in Parry’s old room.