Free When Madeline Was Young by Jane Hamilton Page A

Beeson marrying Aaron Maciver, no cascade of wedding gifts, no rehearsal dinner or reception. You could say that they practically eloped, or that they wanted their marriage to be a secret, but I think, more reasonably, my father, unlike his sister and his first wife, was glad for any ritual to be a quiet affair. In the single photo of the day, my mother, overtaken in a silver box of a suit that belonged to Figgy, has her mouth wide open in a madcap grin. Figgy has used that picture against her, making predictable comments to me about how Julia had gone cuckoo in the moment of her conquest. My father is holding steady, looking straight at the camera. I imagine he's just made a wry comment, the trials of his previous marriage having cultivated in him a darker humor. He is probably wondering in disinterested tones if his sister should be smoothing the collar of the Reverend Monder's robe, and in such a casual manner.
    They were, I'm certain, as straightforward as they could be with Madeline, and yet during the engagement how coul d t hey not have betrayed some nervousness? It was an unusual situation, to be sure, no books to guide them through a potentially difficult transition, and it's doubtful that Reverend Monder was of much use. They were going on a short trip, they explained, and when they came back, when they returned to Chicago, they'd live together in the new house. My parents spoke into the silence, Madeline all the while looking slantwise at the floor. They talked about it bit by bit several months in advance, about the time when they'd be married. There were several visits to the house, to stake out Madeline 's bedroom, to show her the place in the backyard for the flower beds, to discuss where they'd put the furniture and how they might eventually buy a piano. It's possible, however, that they were vague about the hour and day of the wedding; as I heard the story, it was when Madeline went down to the lake with Grandmother that they took their leave to the chapel.
    I often wonder what slivers of memory Madeline allowed herself. My wife now and again tells me I'm unusually romantic for a doctor of internal medicine. And so poetic. "Deep down," she adds. She will say so in company, putting her arms around me from behind and kissing the top of my head, Diana taking pity on me or chiding me or having a wistful thought. What poetry is to her I do not know. I like to think she means I'm still open to the notion of mystery. For the most part, I hope that Madeline had successfully and permanently repressed her other life, her girlhood, her marriage erased. In the early days of my practice, I had considered talking to my parents about having her evaluated. We could easily have consulted together with a neurosurgeon, and somewhat easily have comforted Madeline through the noise and confinement of an MRI. We might have begun to understand what areas of her brain were still active, what centers had developed in the absence of those that were damaged.
    It was peculiar, how difficult it was to broach the subject. When I asked--for it was something that never came up--the accident always seemed a thing that had happened so long before, the circumstances of little consequence past the great and unalterable consequence. They did not perhaps want to remember the length of time in the hospital , the day-to-day hopes and crushing disappointments, and their fatigue when the patient was discharged into her new life. That they never asked me to consider her records or solicited advice in relation to her injury is, I suppose, a result of logical thinking on their part, of believing that she was always going to be as she was, something really we all accepted as a matter of faith.
    She was emotionally unstable, she had trouble with games and puzzles that were past a second-grade level, she spoke loudly, she showed on some occasions signs of disinhibition, the pathological lack of inhibition, although she was also capable of restraint. At