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CHAPTER 1

We cannot tell the story of anything without telling the story of everything.

— THOMAS BERRY

VERMONT, MARCH 23, 2008

My husband, Upton Birnie Brady, was born on Easter Sunday, April 17, 1938, at the Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C. His mother, Madee (Mah-dee, short for Mother dear), used to speak of this confluence with wonder. Cigarette between her fingers, she would tell how her young husband, Francis, had come to the hospital fresh from Mass, his arms full of violets. Susie, six; Ellen, almost four; and fifteen-month-old Francis, called Buff, were at home with their stuffed bunnies and their grandmother. "To be born on Easter," Madee would say, smoke circling her head, "on the Feast of the Resurrection, is to be twice blessed."

Now it is Easter again and the house in Vermont is bursting with our grown children and their children, everyone painting eggs at the dining room table. The ham is in the oven. The jelly beans have been hidden. There is a foot of snow outside, and not a violet anywhere. The adult children are coping. But I am in a bubble of disbelief, which keeps bursting when I don't see Upton anywhere. The chair where he sits with the Times crossword puzzle is empty. On his desk, untouched, lies the manuscript he was editing, his wry comments (two in Latin!) so neatly penciled in the margins. Upton's ordinary, everyday handwriting is as legible and well-proportioned as his Chancery italic on handmade Christmas tags. His final shopping list — dishwash, steak, pots — remains intact on the refrigerator door. His slippers are waiting on the floor by his side of the bed.

While I notice these things, the children are urging me to come up with a plan for his memorial service. Our eldest son, Andrew, his wife, Mari, and their two young children have come all the way from San Francisco, and it would save them two thousand dollars if we could do everything within three weeks. Upton always said he wanted to be buried at sea, and we've agreed to scatter his ashes the following weekend. But I truly do not know what Upton would want us to do for a public memorial service, where he would want it to be, or even if he would want one at all. And then the thought crosses my mind that it doesn't really matter what Upton would want; we are doing this for the living, not for him. We just have trouble saying it. We have trouble saying many things.

Three nights ago, Natty was the first to get here. Upton's body was taken away by the undertaker at ten, and Natty arrived at midnight. We had a beer, and I told him how Upton had had a bath late in the day, as he frequently did, but then hadn't come down to watch the weather. Upton never liked watching the news, but he always watched the weather, every night at six-fifteen. I had heard the water sluicing down the pipes around six, and when the weather came on, I wondered why he still hadn't come downstairs. Afterward, I put the gratin in the oven, set the table, and went up to check on him. The bathroom door was closed, a strip of light coming from the bottom. I knew as I knocked and called out, breathing in the piney scent of rosemary oil from the bath salts, that something was wrong. I didn't wait for a reply, just opened the door, and there he was, clean and sweet and dry, his torso in the empty tub, his legs hanging over the side, his strong feet pink, each toenail smooth and nicely shaped. I tried to picture him perched on the edge of the tub, trying to catch his breath after the long hot soak. His heart must have stopped, not enough oxygen, then a quick collapse and gentle slide back into the tub. His blue eyes were closed, and his face so beautifully serene. No body fluids, no bruises, no life; just an overwhelming peace.

I told Natty how my neighbor Kitty had stayed with me while kind men streamed into the house: paramedics, police, the medical examiner, the undertaker. I told him my answer when the paramedics asked me if they should continue their efforts to bring Upton back to life; I knew that even if they were miraculously successful in getting his heart to work again, no one could restore Upton's brain, oxygen-deprived for at least twenty minutes.

Natty listened while I told him about the day, unexpectedly Upton's and my last together. Unexpectedly, because even though Upton had recently been diagnosed with emphysema, and had a history of heart problems, he was on medication and his short-term prognosis was good.

It had snowed all night and most of the day. Upton, wedded to his daily routine and usually undaunted by slippery roads, decided at ten not to get the mail, and at twelve-thirty, not even to go out for his usual lunch at the Co-op. In the soft daylight of falling snow, we polished off Sunday's asparagus soup, our backs warmed by the woodstove. We talked about the books we were working on and the taxes that were soon due. Upton cooked Mondays through Thursdays. He hated leftovers and shopped every day for that night's supper when he went out for lunch. Since he hadn't gone out, I offered to turn Sunday's baked ham into supper with leeks, potatoes, and a little cheese, and he was grateful.

"I've been cold all day," he said. "If you cook, I can have a nice hot bath before dinner."

We talked about Easter, coming up soon, and where we would go to celebrate the victory of life over death. Our beloved and liberal pastor had retired suddenly a few years ago, driven out by spurious gossip of gay activities, and his humorless replacement made both of us crazy with his ultraconservative doctrine.

"Let's drive down to Cambridge and go to St. Paul's," suggested Upton. "We could stop for lunch on the way back."

A fine plan. St. Paul's had been Upton's church while he was at Harvard and again, five years later, when we moved back to Cambridge from New York. I received my religious instruction at St. Paul's, and six months later, made my First Communion there, a brand-new Catholic, and mother of three small children. St. Paul's was also home to the Boston Boy Choir, and blessed with extraordinary music.

But a few minutes after suggesting we go to St. Paul's, Upton changed his mind. "You know, I don't want to be seen in any Roman Catholic church. Let's just stay here."

Both of us were disgusted by the rash of reports of rampant sexual abuse, and furious at the way the Church continued to protect its pederast priests. But there was also sorrow in Upton's voice, and I knew he missed the liturgy and the liturgical calendar that had been so central throughout his almost seventy years.

Upton would deliberately astonish people he barely knew by saying he had been raised in a Benedictine monastery, as if he'd been a foundling, left in the care of the good brothers. A colorful story, but the truth is that his father was the lay headmaster of the Portsmouth Priory (now Portsmouth Abbey) School in Rhode Island. The Bradys lived in an eighteenth-century farmhouse on the Priory grounds, where the sound of the chapel bell measured their days from lauds to compline. The Church was in the air they breathed, its sacrificial doctrine embedded in their flesh and blood.

A few minutes later, Upton put his soupspoon down. "You know," he said, blue eyes fixed on the snow, "when I come back to this world, I think I'd like to come back as a stone."

"A stone?"

He turned his gaze on me. "Stones are peaceful. Don't you think that would be a good way to return?" Why was he thinking of returning, when he was still right here, with me? I didn't say that. Nor did I mention that it would be cold to be a stone today, in this snow. I didn't say that maybe stones don't have feelings. I just nodded and said, "Yes, very peaceful."

* * *

I talked until Natty and I were both spent. It was time for bed, something I'd been dreading. I looked at my son, standing in the kitchen, solid and robust.

"Natty, what will I do? Where will I sleep?"

He gave me a stern, blue-eyed stare. "Mom, if you ever want to sleep in that bed again, you'd better do it now."

Natty was right. I spent what was left of the night in Upton's and my old spool bed, with his clean scent still on the pillow, and the terrain of his body visible in the hollows of our old mattress.

BOSTON, JUNE 1956

I first met Upton Brady at the Boston Cotillion. In May, I graduated from Foxhollow, a small boarding school for girls in Lenox, Massachusetts, and a week later, I turned seventeen. In September, I would start my freshman year at Barnard College in New York. But on that June night in the ornate ballroom of the old Copley Plaza with its gilded chairs and potted palms, I was a wary Boston debutante in a rustling, long white dress and creamy kid gloves that stopped at my shoulders. There were a hundred of us, each with shiny hair, our teeth straight, lined up to proceed on our father's arm down the length of the ballroom to the six matrons waiting to welcome us into Boston society. Two of these women with their glittering diamond rings and pearl chokers were mothers of friends from school. They'd given me rides in their station wagons; I'd seen them in blue jeans, raking leaves and scouring their kitchens. And now, as the master of ceremonies announced my name, I curtsied to them — not just a little bob of a curtsy, but all the way to the floor. It was hard not to giggle.

George, my Cotillion escort, home for the summer from Yale, was a good friend, not a boyfriend. Like me, he was tongue-in-cheek about the debutante ritual. What's more, he was a quick, sure-footed partner, making me feel like Cyd Charisse as we circled and dipped beneath the winking chandeliers. Unlike most couples that night, we were there to dance, not flirt; I think that's why Upton cut in, for the dancing.

"Upton Brady." He bowed slightly as he took my gloved hand, and I thought he clicked his heels, though it happened so fast I wasn't sure.

"Sally Ryder," I said, caught suddenly by the bluest eyes I'd ever seen.

Most men at dancing parties were much too tall for me, their feet too big. But not this blond, fine-boned Harvard sophomore with startlingly blue eyes. When he put his hand firmly against my back and propelled me across the polished floor, our bodies fit, leg to leg, pelvis to pelvis. I instinctively knew what his next step would be. When, without any warning, he let me drop almost to the floor in a dip, I didn't miss a beat. And when someone cut in a few minutes later, I was both sorry and glad — sorry the dance with Upton was over, but glad it was clear I was no wallflower. Maybe, I thought, he will cut in again.

And he did, several times that night, each time asking me to tell him my name, one more time. Upton Brady, impeccably turned out in his grandfather's tails, boiled shirt with gold studs and wing collar, was charming, even when tipsy; even when he couldn't remember my name. It seemed as if he could physically telegraph to my body whatever steps he was inventing on the dance floor, making each swooping waltz and sultry tango feel as natural as breathing.

At the many coming-out parties that followed the Cotillion, Upton would often appear — a self-proclaimed "deb's delight." He would cut in, and skim me across the floor, tails whipping around his narrow hips. At every party, when the music stopped, he would give me a slightly sheepish look, his eyes too bright. "I'm terribly sorry," he'd say, his hand still firm against the small of my back, "but I've forgotten your name again."

My debutante year sped by, with many dancing parties and many dancing partners — handsome, eligible young men who, unlike Upton, did remember my name. But Upton was the one I looked for.

The summer of 1956, right after the Cotillion, I was an apprentice at the Cambridge Drama Festival, a summer theater company that put on three high-powered Equity shows: Saint Joan, starring Siobhán McKenna; The Beggar's Opera, with Shirley Jones and Jack Cassidy; and Henry the Fifth, with Michael Wager, Douglass Watson, and Felicia Monteleagre, who was married to Leonard Bernstein. Overnight, I became more Bohemian than debutante, my silky pageboy now replaced by saucy gamin fringe.

Two of the producers, Bryant Haliday and William Morris Hunt, were founders of the Brattle Theatre Company, an avant-garde, professional company in Cambridge. Haliday and several of the actors were openly homosexual, something no one paid much attention to. I had never known anyone who was queer — at least, not that I knew of. I didn't even know what it was they did, just that it was forbidden. Bryant had a beautiful young French boy, ten or eleven, living with him. I didn't know what their relationship was, but there were hints of sex that made me uneasy, and made me think there was something sinister about Bryant. I never felt comfortable around him, but the other homosexual men were more familiar to me, easy to be around, and I soon stopped thinking of them as different from any of the other assorted theater people.

I met Nikos at the end of that summer at a typical Cambridge party in a hot, crowded, third-floor garret. I was sitting on top of the refrigerator wearing a red Lanz dress sprinkled with valentines. Nikos appeared, so tall his dark eyes were nearly level with mine from my perch. He looked like a young Gregory Peck, only darker and even more handsome, his lips curved in a classic archaic smile. Nikos, with his laundered English shirts and formal, European manners, was not a bit like the other scruffy, sandaled, Harvard Square actor/playwrights, and I wanted him to ask me out. But Harvard Summer School was ending, and Nikos was on his way to Europe before classes started up again in the fall.

In September, I began my freshman year at Barnard. Nikos and I didn't meet again until the following year, when I was back in Cambridge. I spent far more time at Yale and Princeton my freshman year than in classrooms or the library, and in June, the Barnard deans wisely suggested that I take a year or two off. I moved back in with my parents, learned to type, and got a job at Harvard with time off to study acting at Boston University. Joan Baez was in my acting class. She, too, lived with her parents, in nearby Belmont, and three mornings a week she'd pick me up on her Vespa and off we'd go. For the next two years, I acted in the Poets' Theatre and in various Harvard productions, where Nikos and I rediscovered each other and began to go out, casually at first, and soon with a new fire. Nikos paid attention to me, to my clothes, to my stories about growing up in Woods Hole, to my theatrical ambitions. He seemed hungry to know everything about me, and made me feel as if I had a wealth of treasure to offer him, bright gems to delight another person, something I'd never felt before.

His senior year, Nikos moved off campus into an apartment with two classmates, a grown-up arrangement with separate bedrooms and no parietal hours, unlike in the Harvard dorms. One of his roommates had a live-in girlfriend whose diaphragm sat carelessly on the shelf above the bathroom sink. I was still a virgin, a "nice girl" who couldn't imagine chatting with my doctor — also my mother's doctor — about birth control. I would eye the diaphragm, thinking there was something slutty about such open premarital sex. Weren't we supposed to "save ourselves" for our husbands? My relationship with Nikos intensified; I stopped seeing other men, awash in the delirium of first love and dissolving boundaries, in believing I "belonged" to someone else.

Nikos brought me to Rye, New York, to visit his elegant Greek parents. Their house, on the edge of a famous country club, couldn't have been more different from my parents' house in Cambridge, with its motley collection of well-thumbed books, scarred family furniture, balding Oriental rugs, and even a few dark portraits of ancestors. At the house in Rye, luminous French Impressionist paintings with their own recessed ceiling lights glowed on the walls, and my feet sank into snow-white carpets. I enjoyed Nikos's parents, but not his unease when he was with them. In Rye, even his posture was different. He hunched over, no longer six feet two; he was never without a cigarette, and worst of all, he had trouble with words; sometimes the effort of speaking seemed almost unbearable. Alone with me, or with his friends, Nikos was a gifted talker with curious stories and the wit of a wordsmith. But when he was in his father's house, he was nearly mute. Luckily he would soon make his own, separate life.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "A Box of Darkness"
by .
Copyright © 2011 Sally Ryder Brady.
Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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