Chapter 49
Ann Marie was thirty-six years old, and her brother, "The Senator," came from Washington to Green Hills-the "Settlement"-to celebrate their joint birthday. His wife came with him, querulous as always and expressing her opinion that this was a hardship considering that "the Season was in full bloom, and you need to be Seen, Rory." Her children, neglected and brought up by well-paid but indifferent servants and governesses, annoyed her. Mentally a child, herself, she thought of them as rivals. She reminded Rory that her parents had planned a birthday party for him in Washington, and now it must be postponed for several days. "After all," she would complain to Rory, "you owe everything to the fact that you married me and I am of a Distinguished Family, and your father is only a businessman." She could not understand why Rory laughed himself almost into hysteria. Ann Marie seemed more of a child than ever, rosy, fat, smiling innocently, babbling, playing with her dolls. Rory, her twin, sat in her rooms with her and tried to find, in that blank face and those luminous sherry- colored eyes, some trace of the sister he had loved, and who had grown in the womb with him. Once, when they were alone, he said to her very quietly, "Ann Marie? Do you remember Courtney?" The rosy smile had widened. But all at once Rory saw, in those shining eyes, a shadow, a terror, an anguish which jolted him. Then it was gone. He was shaken. How much did Ann Marie remember? Was she lurking behind that plump and roseate facade, hiding? The soft lax hand in his had tightened, had grasped, and then it was limp again and she was talking about her new doll. When he stood up to go, sighing, she had looked up at him and the smile was gone. "Rory?" she said. She had recognized him, then, though when he had appeared only an hour ago she had looked at him questioningly, with a child's shy and wary smile, shrinking at the sight of a stranger. He bent over his sister, himself resplendent and shining even in the pale and bitter sunlight of March, and the icy reflection of the glittering snow outside. "Yes, dear," he said. She put her fat arms up to him and he held her, and he felt the trembling of her cheek against his. Then she moaned, "Rory, Rory. Oh, Rory-Courtney." She clutched him desperately, and he dared not move or speak. Then she had dropped her arms and he had straightened up and she was giving him, once again, a very young child's wide-eyed stare. She giggled. She pushed a doll at him and said, "Kiss, kiss." His mother said to him, with a weariness not entirely affected, "I wish to God your father would permit her to go to a fine private institution. You have no idea of the hopelessness, Rory, and the responsibility. Ann Marie is becoming so heavy that nurses complain, and leave, no matter what we pay them. She is walking less and less, and spends more and more time in bed, and she is so fat that I can't understand what the doctors mean by 'atrophy.' She certainly isn't wasting! She can't go for drives any longer.
It is almost impossible to get her up and down the stairs, and now your father is installing an elevator for her. She looks like an infant. It is more than I can bear. Do talk to your father. When we have parties here, she sometimes screeches from upstairs and it unnerves people, and sometimes she fights with her nurses and is uncontrollable and shouts that she has to go to the woods. Really, Rory." She sighed. "Worse and worse. And Rory-sometimes the smell! It is disgusting, and I am ashamed to speak of it. The whole upstairs, sometimes- Complete degeneration, the doctors say, who agree with me that she'd be far better off in some institution." "She never speaks about-anything?" Rory asked. "No. If I don't see her for a few days, and God knows I am always here now, and I go into her rooms she stares at me and whimpers and doesn't recognize me, her own mother. It is very strange. She does recognize your father, no matter how long his absences are. I feel there is a curse upon this family, Rory, a curse "Now, Ma," he said, but he frowned. He did not speak to his father.* Joseph tried to be in Green Hills at least one week in every month to, see his daughter. She always greeted him with such delight that he would * dare to hope, for a minute or two, that she had returned to this world, for ; she knew him and would hold out her arms to him and cuddle against him, shyly. But within an hour or two she was withdrawn, smiling that little childish smile, and babbling. He would smooth that soft brown hair, and notice the widening bands of gray, and the increasing wrinkles in the' soft rosy face. Sometimes she seemed sixty years old, blubbery, almost massive in her fat, inert, blinking, not seeing, not knowing. But how can I send her away? he would think. This is all she has, her home, these rooms, her toys, her nurses. He would look into her eyes, childlike still, and try to find his daughter, to discover that "soul" that had once "; inhabited this bloated flesh. But it was like peering down into a deep well where only reflections rippled the surface. He came back to Green Hills on a June morning so warm, so radiant, so full of brightness, that it was like a promise of coming joy. The roses rampaged from every bed on the estate, red and white and yellow, and were full of scent under the blowing trees. He remembered that spring day when he had first seen Green Hills and had heard the peepers in the f trees and had seen the shine of blue water and the brisk arrowing of birds from limb to limb. What had he told himself then, what had he promised himself? He could not remember. I am an old man, he thought. I am tired, and old, and my hair is white and it is a burden to wake up in the morning and confront the day. Yet, I must. Why? I do not know. I have yet to find out what drives us. He suspected that the tiredness of his body j came from his mind and not from his still vigorous lean body and his supple muscles, but that did not decrease the weariness, the mounting sense of futility that ran over him like a tidal wave when he was most vulnerable. He was no more interested in his grandchildren-about whom Bernadette was always prattling-than he had been when his own children were this young age. Their occasional presence in his house bored and annoyed him. The shrillness of their voices, the pounding of their feet on wood or marble, their empty faces, depressed him. There was a growing fad these days about "the Children," and he found it obnoxious and irritating, and when his friends spoke of their grandchildren he thought them fatuous, and knew that they knew they were. Daniel and Joseph, nine and eight respectively, were already attending boarding school. ("Thank God," Joseph would remark.) The little girls, pretty but vacuous of face, were still at home. Now this was June, and the boys were in Green Hills and shouting "all over the damned place," thought Joseph. Why didn't that fool of a mother of theirs try to restrain them, or their governesses thrash them? When Joseph spoke of his grandchildren to their father, Rory, Rory would say with a curious smile, "I don't think they are too bad. Of course, they are not very intelligent, but neither is their mother. And you did want me to marry their mother, didn't you, Pa? Matter of inheritance. At least they are equal to Claudia now in their minds, if that is any consolation, which it isn't." Marjorie's children, Rory would think, would be bright and witty and spirited, not "lumps," as Joseph called his grandchildren. Marjorie's children would be full of radiant mischief, but gentle, kind, understanding, perceptive. Marjorie, Marjorie, my darling, Rory would think, looking at his children with their red hair and pallid blue eyes and big teeth. Rosemary was certainly no more aware of life than Ann Marie. Sometimes she drooled. "Blood will out!" Rory would say roundly to his father, with a strange grin. "Claudia's blood." But he could not understand why his father would then look so somber and turn away, for never had he suspected that Joseph had had any part in the annulment of his marriage. You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, Rory would think, contemplating his children and their mother. But he did not speak of this to Joseph. If only I could get rid of Claudia and not endanger my career, Rory would often say to himself. That foolish woman with her big backside and fat bowed legs and airs and graces! He no longer saw her charm, her formidable power of entrancement. He did not particularly like his mother but he resented Claudia's malicious imitations of her, the Irish imitations. Once he said to Claudia, "When your ancestors were grubbing for English squires and sawing wood my ancestors were noble in Ireland," to which she had replied, "Really! No one takes the Irish seriously. Hod-carriers, and such." She loved wine. She was always compl
aining of Rory's vulgar whiskey. "Whiskey is not civilized," she would say. "Only brutes drink it." Rory would look pointedly at her hands and she would darkly flush and hide them. Now it was June and Rory and Claudia were in Devon-"to hear the nightingales!" Claudia would sing, throwing back her head and showing all her huge white teeth.
Captains and the Kings Page 74
