But a power purchased at what price? Think about it. Afflicts herself with illiteracy too. Takes it on voluntarily. Not to infantilize herself, however, not to present herself as a dependent kid, but just the opposite: to spotlight the barbaric self befitting the world. Not rejecting learning as a stifling form of propriety but trumping learning by a knowledge that is stronger and prior. She has nothing against reading per se—it's that pretending not to be able to feels right to her. It spices things up. She just cannot get enough of the toxins: of all that you're not supposed to be, to show, to say, to think but that you are and show and say and think whether you like it or not.
"I can't burn it," Faunia's father said. "It's hers. I can't just throw it in the trash."
"Well, I can," the woman said.
"It's not right."
"You have been walking through this mine field all your life. You don't need more."
"It's all that's left of her."
"There's the revolver. That's left of her. There's the bullets, Harry.
She left that."
"The way she lived," he said, sounding suddenly at the edge of tears.
"The way she lived is the way she died. It's why she died."
"You've got to give me the diary," he said.
"No. It's bad enough we even came here."
"Destroy it, destroy it, and I just don't know what."
"I'm only doing what is best for you."
"What does she say?"
"It doesn't bear repeating."
"Oh, God," he said.
"Eat. You have to eat something. Those pancakes look good."
"My daughter," he said.
"You did all you could."
"I should have taken her away when she was six years old."
"You didn't know. How could you know what was going to be?"
"I should never have left her with that woman."
"And we should never have come up here," his companion said.
"All you have to do now is get sick up here. Then the thing will be complete."
"I want the ashes."
"They should have buried the ashes. In there. With her. I don't know why they didn't."
"I want the ashes, Syl. Those are my grandkids. That's all I've got left to show for everything."
"I've taken care of the ashes."
"No!"
"You didn't need those ashes. You've been through enough. I will not have something happening to you. Those ashes are not coming on the plane."
"What did you do?"
"I took care of them," she said. "I was respectful. But they're gone."
"Oh, my God."
"That's over," she told him. "It's all over. You did your duty. You did more than your duty. You don't need any more. Now let's you eat something. I packed the room up. I paid. Now there's just getting you home."
"Oh, you are the best, Sylvia, the very best."
"I don't want you hurt anymore. I will not let them hurt you."
"You are the best."
"Try and eat. Those look real good."
"Want some?"
"No," she said, "I want you to eat."
"I can't eat it all."
"Use the syrup. Here, I'll do it, I'll pour it."
I waited for them outside, on the green, and then when I saw the wheelchair coming through the restaurant door, I crossed the street and, as she was wheeling him away from Pauline's Place, I introduced myself, walking alongside him as I spoke. "I live here. I knew your daughter. Only slightly, but I met her several times. I was at the funeral yesterday. I saw you there. I want to express my condolences."
He was a large man with a large frame, much larger than he'd seemed slumped over in the chair at the funeral. He was probably well over six feet, but with the look on his stern, strongly boned face (Faunia's inexpressive face, hers exactly—the thin lips, the steep chin, the sharp aquiline nose, the same blue, deep-set eyes, and above them, framing the pale lashes, that same puff of flesh, that same fullness that had struck me out at the dairy farm as her one exotic marking, her face's only emblem of allure)—with the look of a man sentenced not just to imprisonment in that chair but condemned to some even greater anguish for the rest of his days. Big as he was, or once had been, there was nothing left of him but his fear.
I saw that fear at the back of his gaze the instant he looked up to thank me. "You're very kind," he said.
He was probably about my age, but there was evidence of a privileged New England childhood in his speech that dated back to long before either of us was born. I'd recognized it earlier in the restaurant —tethered, by that speech alone, by the patterns of moneyed, quasi-Anglined speech, to the decorous conventions of an entirely other America.
"Are you Faunia's stepmother?" That seemed as good a way as any to get her attention—and to get her perhaps to slow down. I assumed they were on their way back to the College Arms, around the corner from the green.
"This is Sylvia," he said.