Bellefleur

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Garth would have defined it as resentment he continued to feel as the weeks passed, had he been given—as he was not—to brooding over his own emotions: resentment and a dull baffled aching anger and a sense of something obscurely not right. Garth had always been a fairly closemouthed boy, though inordinately noisy and lively; he had walked home one winter afternoon from bobsledding, after a spill in which no one was evidently hurt, holding his hand close against his side, saying nothing to the other children, though the smallest finger of his right hand had been nearly severed (and was to be sewn back on by a remarkably quick-witted Leah, even as the doctor was sought) and there was of course an alarming loss of blood. He would never say what was wrong, if he was growing angry, or why he was growing angry—it was his habit merely to erupt into passion. Even when Yolande (with whom he shared certain secrets against their parents and the other adults) asked him what was wrong, was he slipping into a black mood, he muttered only, “Go to hell with you, you nosy damn bitch.”

  In the nursery were things Garth had played with as a child, and outgrown—the rocking horses, the merry-go-round, the stuffed animals—though he could only dimly remember them, and their very sight filled him with an inexplicable inchoate anger. He watched the strange child move among them, as silent as he, lifting and setting down toys as if she too were recognizing them, but did not quite know what to do with them. Several of the girls—Christabel and Vida and of course Yolande, who could not resist anything stray and mysterious—played with Little Goldie, making friends by degrees, helping her with her lessons now that Bromwell was banished from the nursery (and it was the case, rather oddly, that Gideon took Garth’s side in the outburst, and would have walloped Bromwell’s behind if the child hadn’t burst into tears), and with her ABC sampler, which she was doing in rich purples, golds, and greens, exactly like the old, tattered sampler on the wall, framed and behind glass, that had once been done by someone named Arlette Bellefleur—ABC’s, numerals up to ten, and the statement I AM ARLETTE BELLEFLEUR BORN 1811—though of course the sampler on the wall was badly faded. No one thought it puzzling that Garth, who was always out of doors, even in bad weather, lingered about the nursery with the girls, quick to offer to repair their dollhouse (which must have been, Yolande said, one hundred years old, and termite-ridden) when the swinging wall fell off its hinges, and to help them move furniture about (they aped the restless Leah who liked nothing so much as to spend a rainy afternoon ordering the servants to rearrange the furniture, and struggling impatiently with pieces herself)—the teetering whatnot shelf made of empty spools of thread, painted Chinese red, and filled with dolls’ china and tiny glass birds and animals and eggs, which Garth carried without effort, and in a wonderfully graceful way, so that nothing toppled off and broke; the child-sized horsehair sofa that was a replica of one of the parlor sofas; the heavy music box, which must have been three feet deep and five feet long, the size of a child’s casket, said to have been made in Switzerland though it was equipped with American rolls. When Yolande thanked him spiritedly, as if she were proud—especially before Little Goldie—of how considerate her older brother could be, Garth blushed and could not think of anything to say. He knew only that the strange little girl with the solemn freckled face and the waist-long white-blond hair was staring at him intently.

  So he fled the nursery, and spent a week or so outdoors—working on the farm, accompanying Ewan and Hiram on a business trip to the Falls. And then he reappeared one stormy afternoon when the temperature dropped thirty degrees in an hour, and asked if they wouldn’t like him to build a fire in the little fireplace—? By this time Goldie was clearly more at home, and seemed happy to see him. She laughed often, though she would not always explain her merriment; she hugged Yolande when Yolande guided her clumsy hands so that she could thread an especially fine needle; she offered Garth a doll’s cup of the rank catnip tea the girls had brewed. One of the women had taken the time to set her hair in ringlets, and she looked as sweet, as demure, as improbably pious as the pencil drawings on the nursery walls of numerous Bellefleurs as children (these insipid drawings, done by more than one artist, portrayed Raoul, Emmanuel, Ewan, Gideon, and even Noel, Matilde, Jean-Pierre II, Della, and Hiram, and one or two unidentified children, in identical poses: their hands clasped in prayer, their eyes cast beseechingly heavenward); but even then Garth did not comprehend how he loved her.

  He cranked the music box for the girls, and willingly changed the heavy copper rolls, though it embarrassed him to be forced to admit—as Bromwell would not have been forced—that he hadn’t any idea of how the mechanism worked. “It just goes like this, this thing in here,” he said, growing warm as Little Goldie along with Christabel and Yolande pressed near. The music box hadn’t been one of the pastimes Garth had cared for, when he had slept in the nursery, and even now he found its smooth gleaming oak sides and its fussy etched-glass lid discomforting. It might so easily break down and how on earth would he repair it?

  One of the rolls gave out, at various speeds, English minuets and rondos and dainty tinkling tunes, another bellowed hymns accompanied by a wheezing organ, still another—Garth’s favorite—sang “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and “General Harrison’s Grand March” and the “St. Louis Light Guard Polka and Schottisch.” Garth grew to like the music, or at any rate to like Little Goldie’s solemn, awed interest in it, and though the other girls rapidly lost interest and drifted away, and Yolande began to be absent from the nursery for days at a time, Garth never grew tired of turning the brass crank. On their honeymoon, in fact on their wedding night, the “St. Louis Light Guard Polka and Schottisch” was to attain a wildly ecstatic beauty.

  Because he had never been in love before Garth had no idea, nor might anyone have thought to explain to him (for he was naturally moody, and often turned away with a snarl when approached) why he was stricken with insomnia, why he lost his appetite, why he wanted only to be by himself—in the cemetery, up at Bloody Run, riding his horse along Mink Creek—or why, perversely, he wanted never to be alone, but with Little Goldie. He bloodied his cousin Louis’s lip when Louis inadvertently bumped into him, and then again he ran out barefoot in the rain, late one night, to waylay his uncle Hiram who, sleepwalking, had managed to open the two or three doors locked for his protection, and who was stumbling open-eyed, his arms feebly extended, in the direction of the Bellefleurs’ dock on Lake Noir: and Garth did this with a peculiar abashed courtesy. (He had, in the past, been sent after Hiram, and had never been able to resist grabbing the pompous old fool’s arm roughly, and shaking him awake, though he was instructed not to do so.) He turned on Mahalaleel when Mahalaleel leapt up from nowhere onto the wrought-iron table in the garden where some of the family was lunching, and nearly made off with a turkey drumstick, though the rash action resulted in a badly lacerated forearm, and everyone chided him: he shouldn’t have tried to hurt Mahalaleel, he should only have tried to retrieve the drumstick. And then again he was patient with Vida, and told the boys not to follow Raphael out to his pond but to leave him alone, what did it matter, what the hell did it matter, if Raphael wanted to be by himself every day? His blood pounded with a sudden impulsive fury, and then subsided; and he felt sometimes like weeping; and he did suffer from insomnia for the first time in his life. (Previously Garth had been certain that people who claimed to lie awake all night were lying. They must be lying, for how on earth did they keep their eyelids from closing as his did, within seconds after he lay his head on the pillow?)

  One night, sleepless, he wandered the second-floor corridor in the direction of the nursery, and happened to see great-aunt Veronica gliding along, noiselessly, ahead of him, her feet evidently bare, and very pale, her long thick gunmetal-gray hair loose on her shoulders, her dark robe (for she wore mourning, like Della, even at night) billowing about her—and he thought it odd that Veronica should pause at the nursery door, and stand with her head inclined to it for several long seconds, and then open the door and step inside.
Odd, and disturbing, though he couldn’t have said precisely why—for wasn’t it the prerogative, even the duty, of the women in the house to check on the younger children from time to time? But he followed Veronica into the darkened nursery and saw, by moonlight, how she bent over the sleeping Little Goldie, and how stiff her back went when she heard or sensed his presence. She turned to him readily, however, as if not very surprised, and, her forefinger to her lips, pushed him back out into the candlelit corridor, and said, her eyes nearly shut as if she were winking: “What a charming little sister Ewan and Gideon brought home for you. . . . She’s very attractive, isn’t she?”

  But it was only after several distressing weeks, at dusk of a blustery August day, when, in Little Goldie’s presence, he first began to comprehend the nature of his affliction. Vida and Christabel and Morna and Little Goldie had served him “tea” in the nursery, using miniature cups and saucers, and everyone was sillier than usual because it wasn’t tea they sipped but sweet cream sherry one of the girls had stolen from downstairs (Bellefleur children, throughout the generations, always stole sweet sherries and liqueurs from downstairs, and were rarely caught, even by adults who had done the same thing as children in the same house), when they began to giggle at the pencil drawings on the walls which looked, in Christabel’s reiterated phrase, like horses’ asses. There was Ewan as a little boy! So funny, rolling his eyes upward! And grandfather Noel of all people! And Hiram, hardly more than a baby! Oh, why were their lips so dark, as if they were wearing lipstick, and why did the girls have such grotesque hairdos! And their eyes shone like angels’ eyes. The most angelic, the most alarmingly beautiful, of the portraits was that of Garth’s uncle Gideon, who must have been about Little Goldie’s age at the time of the drawing. Christabel giggled and giggled at it, until her cheeks were wet with tears. “Just look at Daddy! Just look at Daddy!” she cried. But Little Goldie, suddenly sober, ran to the wall, and stood on her tiptoes to examine the portrait. Garth saw how her expression changed; how raptly she stared up at the striking child inside the ornate gold frame. Little Goldie mumbled something that sounded like, “That’s him, is it,” and Garth’s insides contracted violently with a poison he knew at once—though how could he have known, being so inexperienced?—was jealousy. He gripped the tiny teacup so hard its handle shattered.

  The Hound

  In a full-bodiced white blouse and a long cornflower-blue cotton skirt, wearing her new straw hat with the wide pink velvet ribbon that fell in two streamers down her back, Yolande Bellefleur left the graveled path of the park and, seeing that no one watched, climbed over a split-rail fence with no more than two quick deft movements that hardly showed the white of her petticoats. . . . There was no one to observe the fact that she was slipping off into the forbidden woods north of the cemetery, alone; there was no one to see how becomingly the pink streamers fell against her curly wheat-colored hair. One moment she was on the path, walking without haste: the next moment she had disappeared into the stand of hemlock and mountain maples that bounded the park at this end.

  She was fifteen years old and very pretty and she was on her way—ah, no one would have guessed!—though why on an ordinary weekday morning would she be wearing so fetching an outfit, and her brand-new (it was hardly a week old) straw hat rather than her old straw hat?—on her way—so she mouthed the words, shivering—to meet her lover. Yolande Bellefleur was on her way to meet her lover.

  The woods, the forbidden woods! The forbidden Bellefleur woods!

  Sunless and preternaturally silent and yet enchantingly beautiful: or was it simply the peace of the forest that was so beautiful? Those who strolled idly through the woods found themselves saying less and less, for words, in this dark still inhuman place, rang hollow; tasted suddenly meager on the tongue; lost their meaning. Peace, tranquillity, silence, the soft bed of pine needles always underfoot, springy, spongy, seductive, lulling. . . . One lowered his voice in this place, and soon stopped talking altogether. For what value had mere words, here?

  Still, she shaped her words aloud, though shyly (for the forest had already begun to intimidate her): “Yolande Bellefleur is on her way to meet her lover. . . .”

  Nine-thirty in the morning. A fresh clear windless day. She had wakened early, stirred by the memory of Saturday’s prolonged delirium: the Steadman wedding upriver at the Steadman estate, Irma Steadman married at the age of seventeen, Yolande one of eight bridesmaids. . . . Irma Steadman, her friend, standing there beside her bridegroom, in that long full gown with its layers of Spanish lace, and the veil that had been her grandmother’s, her small sweet face radiant (for there was no other word); the young man beside her in his bridegroom’s outfit, with the silk-embroidered buttonholes and the ruffled cuffs and the sprig of orange blossom in his lapel, and the smart gleaming patent leather shoes. . . . Yolande’s gown was made of moiré silk, buttercup yellow, and her shoes matched the bride’s: made of fine white kid with small high heels and tiny pearl buttons. Ah, she had loved it. Loved them. Loved the entire day.

  Her side began to ache, from walking so fast, she was out of breath and the straw hat had been knocked askew. How deep the woods were, how eerily beautiful. . . . Children might play at the edge of the forest but girls Yolande’s age were cautioned not to walk in it, not even in twos or threes, and certainly not alone. If Lily knew—! If grandmother Cornelia knew—! “Oh, for God’s sake what do you think will happen to me,” Yolande snorted, “do you think I’ll be raped, for God’s sake!” Lily stared at her as if she’d never heard anything so astonishing. She missed the opportunity, even, to be angry: just stood there staring at her brash arrogant daughter. “Well, Mother, I mean . . . I mean, for God’s sake,” Yolande murmured weakly. “You know very well that nothing can happen to me in our own woods.”

  Tales of girls alone in the forest many years ago: someone named Hepatica, a distant aunt or cousin, who had walked alone in this very woods, evidently, and had met . . . or been confronted by . . . by whom, by what? Yolande did not recall. There were hints that something had happened or almost happened to aunt Veronica, long ago (but it would have to be long ago, Yolande giggled, for poor thick-waisted homely aunt Veronica was hardly the type of woman to drive men into a frenzy of lust), and something had almost happened to Aveline as well. . . . Cautionary tales, frankly silly tales that Yolande only pretended to listen to: she knew very well how foolish the older women were being. Yolande this, Yolande that. Yolande, don’t run, you must learn to walk like a lady, and when entering a room you should . . . you should not . . . you should. . . . Never cross your knees, don’t cross your arms either, you don’t want to flatten your bosom but you certainly don’t want to make it prominent by crossing your arms beneath. . . . Are you listening? Where is your mind?

  Yolande!

  A white-and-brown hare bounded away in terror so extreme she halfway thought it must be playful or mocking. Why run from her, what possible harm might she do? “Oh, you silly bunny! Silly dear darling bunny. . . .” There were deer in the Bellefleur woods, hidden from sight; and owls and foxes and raccoons and pheasants; there might be bears—though probably not so close to the house; there might be (and here Yolande swallowed hard, for she hadn’t thought of this earlier, she never thought of such ugly distressing things) snakes . . . long thick squirming hideous snakes. . . . (Hadn’t Garth brought home, the summer before, a twelve-footer?—draped about his neck, its head bashed in, is warm glinting coral-brown skin looking supple as if it still breathed?) But snakes, she knew, felt the vibrations of footsteps, and fled . . . even the poisonous snakes fled . . . most of the time. Snakes do not want to confront human beings, it was said.

  Once there had been panthers and wolves in this very forest, but they had been killed off, or driven out. From time to time the Noir Vulture appeared, a bold vicious predator that could lift creatures the size of foxes and fawns into the air, and tear them apart as it flew, ripping and stabbing with its long thin beak: but the Noir Vulture was nearly extin
ct, and Yolande had certainly never caught a glimpse of one; even her brothers had never seen one. “Oh, very likely there isn’t such a thing,” Yolande murmured aloud, “very likely they’ve just made it up to scare us. . . .”

  Another panicked crashing through the underbrush. This was a somewhat larger creature, and Yolande’s heart leapt as if it wanted to burst free of her body. Ah—what a commotion! But there was nothing to fear. A pity that the forest creatures lived in such terror, bounding away from Yolande Bellefleur in her pretty blue skirt and her smart straw hat, as if they imagined she was a hunter. . . . Her heart was still pounding. It shared in the creature’s frenzied panic, and wanted to fly free of her ribs and escape into the forest.

  Yolande stood motionless, until the attack of panic subsided. Overhead was a small patch of sky, straight overhead, no more than a few inches in circumference: it looked like a faint blue ball poised on the topmost branches of the pines. “Well—if it rains I won’t get wet,” Yolande said aloud. “The rain couldn’t penetrate all that.”

  She came upon a glade of long, bent-over grass, where coarse chicory grew, and another blue flower she couldn’t resist picking and entwining in the band of her hat—were they dayflowers?—and now she looked very pert and pretty indeed; and where was her lover?

  The glade would have been, she saw, an appropriate meeting place.

  There was no one to observe her kicking off her shoes, and dancing three steps in one direction, and three steps in another. . . . And she began to sing, to hum, even to whistle, snapping her fingers, even lifting her skirts for a little impish kick that showed her petticoats. In the city last June she’d seen a music hall show, she’d marveled at the dancers’ white satin outfits, their high-piled black hair that gleamed like tar, their garishly made-up faces, their—but what was it!—their style. One or two of the girls had seemed not much older than Yolande herself. She might have sneaked backstage, she might have knocked at a dressing-room door to inquire timidly how one became a dancer or a singer . . . ? Or an actress . . . ?