Work Text:
hope that you spend your days, but they all add up.
The last time Mary would ever speak to Anne, Gilbert had just come in from the garden. He was dirt-streaked and aching all over, but for once, he had found some peace. Mary had asked him to tend to her spring buds — flowers she would never see. When they bloomed they would be her final gift to them.
The door to Mary and Bash’s room stood ajar, and he entered without thinking. In her basket, Delphine’s darling little hands were curling in her sleep; Anne sat by the bed, her elbow creasing the coverlet, holding Mary’s hand. When he saw her face he turned to leave, but Mary called him back.
‘Come here, Gilbert.’
Anne smiled at him. In the fading afternoon light, her grey-green eyes were beautiful. ‘Mary’s giving us one last recipe,’ she said.
‘If there’s a recipe I want to leave behind, it’s one for a good life. I’ve certainly tasted of its sweetness, but I can’t seem to put it down in writing — so I’ve asked our little wordsmith to help me. Join us.’
Anne might not like that, he thought, she had so little time left with Mary as it was. But she had a faraway look in her eyes, dreaming of something. Better days, he hoped. Of all the expressions she wore Gilbert liked this one best of all.
He sat down at the foot of Mary’s bed. It was not a big room, and it put him and Anne shoulder-to-shoulder, almost touching. In school he knew she would have moved away; here she did not.
Mary was humming a tune to herself. He recognised it from Sunday service, from the Easter party. ‘“It is well with my soul”,’ he said to her. ‘I hope you liked the surprise.’
She nodded. ‘It is well,’ she answered. ‘With my soul.’
Gilbert had always had trouble with praying — odd, honest as he was, it was unnatural for him to bare himself in that way. “Gracious Heavenly Father” just wasn’t in his vocabulary. After all the loss in his life, he was most afraid of being vulnerable. Yet at this moment he wanted to fall to his knees and beg for peace, for some respite from this pain, for the kind of extraordinary grace that Mary had and he so sorely lacked.
It was well, she said, with her soul, as she lay here day after day, watching the sun that poured its light through her window rise and set, knowing with each passing that it was time she would never get back. It was not well with Gilbert’s soul. It had not been until he was out in the garden, tangled with the roses, his feet sinking into the warm earth.
Perhaps the respite he prayed for had been granted before he even thought to ask for it.
Anne’s fingers were restless on the coverlet, smoothing, puckering, and feeling the soft cotton under her skin. ‘Were you always happy?’ she asked quietly.
Mary laughed. ‘Always happy! You’ve been writing too many fairytales.’
‘Actually, I write tragical romances.’
Gilbert heard the shadow of wounded dignity in that, and he couldn’t resist the urge to smile. Happy endings, apparently, were not the ones Anne felt worth writing about. Mary would probably have disagreed. She turned Anne’s hand over, palm up, and traced the lines there gently with a finger, as if trying to rewrite her life. ‘I’ll let you in on a secret, Anne: there’s no tragedy without the romance. But that’s a piece of wisdom I believe you already knew, my budding authoress. Tell me, when you write — what’s the surest way of breaking people’s hearts?’
‘I give them happiness.’
‘And take it away again. That’s the problem with happiness. It’s fragile. Fleeting. You know what isn’t? Joy.’
‘You say it like it’s different,’ said Gilbert.
‘It is, because joy comes from gratitude, and gratitude is a choice. What you choose, no one can take away from you.’
‘If it worked that way,’ Anne said rebelliously, ‘I’d choose that you had much, much more time.’
‘I think it’s not quite like that. Let me try to explain.’
Mary shifted under the covers, holding her bandaged hand to her heart. The blood was still seeping through, and on the skin of her arm Gilbert saw the unmistakable tiny pinpricks, like a map to the grave.
‘I was young when I had Elijah, and back then I had nothing else,’ Mary said slowly. ‘I chose to be grateful that I had him to love. In the Bog, life was hard — I chose to love my neighbours, and that was how we got through. And now that I don’t have much time left, I could choose to be bitter. I could choose to weep, and curse, and fill my days with the regret of things I could have done but will now never do. Host the whole of Avonlea at next year’s Easter. Knit scarves this winter. Toast paprika on the fire. I won’t even get to fly that kite, to see it like the sun in the sky. Do you think I am not angry? Don’t mistake me.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Anne said. Her voice was quiet.
‘You don’t choose the circumstances you are in. Life doesn't work that way. You choose what you do with them. And I choose to be grateful,’ said Mary, ‘that I still have a little time left to spend with you.’
Anne laid her cheek on the coverlet. Gilbert saw that her face was tight with pain, and he remembered how he had sat where she now did, holding his father’s hand as she held Mary’s. He marvelled at the way time had come full circle, and at the way he had thought — hoped, with a wild desperation — that he had outrun the sadness of this room, this house. Mary was right. You do not choose your fate.
If Anne sat up and looked in the mirror she might have seen the Gilbert of a hundred yesterdays looking back at her.
Mary was humming again. It was a tired, patient sound, and it joined in the ancient melody that had started at the beginning of time and flowed through the ages like the Lethe. Its waters washed the sadness from the years and took it upon itself. Gilbert knew this river all too well: strange how the spring of tears was also the fountain of life.
‘Anne, I’ve always told you how much it hurts me to know that I will never watch Delphine grow up. What I haven’t told you enough is how much I wish I could do the same for you. Every birthday. College. Graduation. First kiss, first heartbreak. I want to be there at your wedding, Anne! I want to see you loved.’
Anne laughed, but it was smothered by a sob.
‘Oh Mary, you will see all that,’ she said. ‘You will be with me always.’
‘I love you, my dearest little sixteen-year-old trouble.’
Anne stood, holding on to Mary tightly, and stooped to press a kiss to her temple; but from the way she moved, Gilbert knew she was blinded by tears. He had stayed long enough. The time left while Mary still had strength was Anne’s. He moved to the door, touching her shoulder softly as he went.
‘I’ll be outside,’ he said. ‘If you need me.’
‘Gilbert, give me your hand.’
He couldn’t hold Mary’s injured hand, and he looked at her in confusion. Then he understood what she was saying — and he put his hand on top of Anne’s, in hers.
‘Be good,’ said Mary, ‘to one another.’
Her fingers were burning with the fever, dry as autumn leaves are before they crumble into dust. Anne’s hand was slightly sticky. Gilbert’s was still covered in earth, earth that left its mark like a benediction. A sign of peace.
Mary nodded to him, and he left, closing the door quietly behind him. He sat in the darkened kitchen as time, in its cruel way, went on. When Anne finally came neither looked into the other’s face, but she went to him, and he pulled her in by the hand, and they both cried.
Later that night when the candle was burning low, Gilbert went in to see Mary one last time. ‘Get some rest,’ he said. ‘You looked exhausted.’
She managed a smile. ‘Doctor’s orders?’
‘Perhaps. Perhaps.’
‘How are the flowers?’
‘They will be beautiful.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘There’s one more thing I leave in your charge: my Anne. When she left today, I told her I would see her tomorrow. I hope I don’t break that promise — but you’ll look after her for me, Gilbert, if I do?’
He looked at her in anguish.
‘Look after her,’ Mary repeated, ‘as she will look after you.’
‘I will,’ he said. ‘I promise.’
‘Goodnight, Dr Blythe.’
‘Goodnight.’
He blew out the candle by her bed.