A perfectly shaped, perfectly patterned shower of yellow fleur-de-lis exploded in the dark.
“WELL,” THE Old Man said, “I thought we’d lost you.”
“What day is it?”
“Thursday.”
“And what time is it?”
“Two-twenty-two.” The Old Man held out his watch.
She set hers carefully. “Back on schedule. … Papa, what are you doing home in the middle of the afternoon?”
“Wondering whether I should call a doctor for you or an undertaker.”
“You stayed home because you were worried?”
“Is that stupid?”
“It was sweet, Papa. I’m just not used to people being sweet any more.”
“More used to hitting them on the head with mirrors.”
“All those years with Georges, all those good times when everything was fine, and I only remember that last day.”
“Happens,” the Old Man said.
“I’m going to have three cups of coffee and then I’m going to find a hairdresser.” Margaret pushed her fingers through her wiry hair.
“Then you will find me a new house?” He was mocking now.
“Sure,” she said. “And run it too. Just like my mother.” For a moment she stared at the glass-faced oak bookcase on the far wall. There were only four books in it, their bindings faded and unreadable. What would they be—her father didn’t read—where had they come from? Four books, and six—no, seven—china figures. Elephants, all in a row. Pink lady with a parasol. Good God. A poodle with a ball on his nose. Did they date back to her mother’s day?
“Papa, what was my mother like?”
He looked startled.
“What was she like?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
SHE WAS so sleepy, so tired. I’ve got hepatitis, she thought. Or an infected mosquito bit me and I’ve got encephalitis. Or I’ve got a brain tumor and after the operation I’ll have a great wad of bandages wrapped around my head so that I look like a zeppelin.
Anna asked: “Margaret, are you pregnant?”
“Why?”
“Something about the shape of your face, the expression.”
Margaret frowned, trying to remember. “Seems to me I used a diaphragm for everybody.”
“You’ll have to get married now,” Anna said. “Is there anyone you like? I mean, anyone who would do to marry?”
Margaret shook her head, slightly.
Way down inside her, around her backbone, she could feel a stirring. A twisting, like a fish. Minuscule baby curled and swimming in its shell. Dragon in an egg. Swishing its tail, stirring up the primeval waters.
Margaret looked into her sister’s face, so gentle, and so clear. Like a china cup, she thought. You could break it to bits, but you couldn’t penetrate it. Not that shiny beautiful surface, that security of purpose.
“Anna,” she said, “I’m not going to set married.”
Anna’s lovely discreetly rouged mouth closed firmly. “What name will the child have?”
“Well,” Margaret considered. Flash of tail, sudden twitch, tiny speck of flesh to be. making all this confusion. “I could give it Papa’s name. He’d like that.”
“Would he?”
Margaret laughed out loud. “Anna, why don’t you stop being the perfect housewife and the great mother and the Holy Virgin and all those other things?” Maybe, Margaret thought, she’s played at them so long, she’s really become them. “Haven’t you ever noticed? Papa thinks I’m a scream.”
THE PREGNANCY moved her into violent action. She was racing the baby, she was struggling against the steady thickening of her belly. Determinedly, she hunted for houses and lots and contractors and architects. And found nothing. Until one morning, on the front page of the paper: “Papa, John Maroney killed himself.”
He nodded. “Seems he used a shotgun in the bathroom.”
She made a face.
“I imagine he thought the bathroom would be easier to clean.”
Suicide amused him, Margaret thought. It was odd, it was unusual, it was funny.
“We’ll just have to tear out that room,” Margaret said.
“You planning to buy the place?”
“It’s a good house. Who’s going to handle the estate?”
“The man is hardly at the embalmers yet.”
“Make an offer.”
“Before the funeral?”
“They’ll want to get rid of that place. What with Daddy smeared all over the walls.”
“Margaret Mary,” the Old Man said, “you have a terrible sense of humor.”
“It’s exactly like yours.”
“You do want the house?”
“I thought that was settled.” She slapped down the newspaper. “We’re not going to have another fight about money.”
The Old Man was surprised. “What a thing to say to your aging father.”
She looked at him appraisingly. “You know, Papa, if you killed yourself,” she said, “I’d feel terrible.”
“That fact will stay my hand on the trigger.”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” She got up, restlessly. “Just get the house for me.”
HE BOUGHT the house within the month. Margaret, belly swelling steadily, hounded architect and contractors. “I want it finished before the baby,” she demanded.
“Really,” Anna said. They had gone together to the half-finished house. “That just isn’t possible.”
“Put on some more men.”
Anna’s gentle smile appeared. “There are more men here now than can work. You see? They’re stumbling over each other.”
Margaret grinned. “It does look like a WPA project. Poor baby, he’ll have to be born without a roof over his head.”
“His?”
“Sure,” Margaret said, “it’s a boy and his name is Joshua. I wouldn’t have a girl, not me. I wouldn’t make a mistake like that.”
IT WAS a boy. He was born in a rush of green-flecked ammonia-smelling water on her bedroom floor and he lay on the rug with slimy coils of cord twisted beside him. Anna hastily wiped his mouth and nose. “Where is the damn doctor?”
Margaret, still crouching between bedpost and chair, said, “I never heard you cuss before.”
“Margaret, do you know whether you cut the cord now or wait for the afterbirth?”
Margaret closed her eyes, feeling another smaller spasm. “It looks horrible.”
With a slamming of doors, the doctor arrived. “Oh my goodness,” he said. “Oh my goodness.”
Margaret wiped the sweat from her forehead. “You came too late for all the fun.”
“My dear lady, sometimes there are rapid labors.”
“It wasn’t rapid. It’s been going on for the last six hours or so.”
“Oh, Margaret,” Anna said. “Oh, Margaret, why didn’t you say something?”
“I wanted to see if I was a coward.”
“My dear lady,” the doctor took her pulse, hastily. Then turned to the baby.
Margaret stood up. My God, my insides are falling; I’ve been pulled inside out like a sock.
Leaving a slimy trail behind her, she got into bed. She was very tired and she was sleepy. She could hear people rushing by, and the baby chirping, bird-like. Wearily, she turned over, pressing the flabby distention of her stomach into the bed.
That was September, 1941.
YEARS LATER, Margaret thought that everything happened between 1941 and 1945. All the wars, public and personal. All the casualties, visible and invisible. …
Robert Caillet, with a new Navy commission, went to England. The Old Man had his first coronary and his first stroke. And there was the business with Anna’s son Anthony.
Yes, Margaret thought grimly, they were terrible years.
Anthony
WHEN HE WAS VERY small, he thought his mother was the Virgin Mary. She looked quite a lot like the pictures: the same dark hair pulled straight back, the same smile, the same blue dress
. He was even quite sure that once or twice he’d seen her halo.
But when he said so, his father laughed, with a rasping angry edge to his voice: “You started his religious training too soon, Anna. Take him off that steady diet of priests’ books, before the boy starts thinking he’s Jesus Christ.”
“It’s hard for a child,” his mother said, quietly as always. “It’s very confusing.”
But it wasn’t, Anthony thought. Not any more. His father had made it perfectly clear.
It seemed to Anthony that there were two worlds: when his father was home and when he was not. When he wasn’t home, there seemed to be a cover of silence, an invisible shape that slipped over the house. Everyone smiled steadily, moved slowly, was kind and thoughtful and serious. And of course they all loved him. His mother, his nurses, they all loved him very much. But it was so quiet, so motionless. Even his Aunt Margaret, when she came, spoke slowly and her baby seemed to cry more softly than usual.
When his father was home, there was shouting and arguing. The servants rushed about, the house buzzed and hummed. Anthony felt himself vibrate with sympathetic excitement. “Hey, Anthony,” his father would shout every Sunday morning, “you coming sailing with me?”
They went out on the lake, just the two of them, and when his father thought they’d come far enough, he’d drop the sails and they would float there, motionless for the rest of the day.
They sailed every Sunday, in all kinds of weather. Sometimes Anthony trembled with chill inside his heavy clothes. Sometimes he shivered with fear while lightning smacked into the water all around them and the roar of thunder shook the boat. Sometimes he burned with reflected glare.
After one of those white-hot Sundays, while he sat straight and correct at the dinner table, he began to feel dizzy and sick and left his food untouched on his plate. His mother said, “I hope you haven’t had too much sun, Anthony.”
“He’s fine,” his father said.
“He looks scalded, Robert.”
“Well, after dinner, put some of your cold cream on him.” His father winked at him between the twin flickers of candles. “It’ll make you feel better, and it’ll make him smell better.”
Slowly, deliberately, conscious that his mother was looking at him, Anthony winked back. He saw his father’s face disappear and then appear again. He saw the answering grin, and he felt happier.
But when he went to bed he turned and twisted, skin burning, head aching. His mother brought an aspirin, though he hadn’t asked for one. She must have been standing outside his door, listening to the small sounds the bedsprings made.
“You’re terribly hot.” She glanced around the room. Anthony knew that look very well: it ran over him every morning before school, to see if his clothes were correct. It ran over every room in the house to see that the housework was done. It ran over his father every day when he came home from work. It was smooth, light, impersonal.
“Mother,” almost before he realized what he wanted to say, the words came out. “When you leave, would you put out the candle, please?”
She turned to him, questioning.
“There.” He pointed to the dark heavily carved Mexican altar on which a red vigil light flickered. “I don’t want it any more.”
“It’s a lovely old thing.”
“Put it in your room, if you like it.” His father would never stand for that.
“Go to sleep now,” his mother said, and left.
He dragged a chair noisily across the floor and blew out the candle himself.
At dinner again, a week later, he asked, “Mother, would you take the altar off my wall?”
“Take it down?”
“That’s what the boy said.” His father chuckled. “I guess he got tired looking at the ugly thing.”
His mother’s face expressed only calm interest and pleasant attention, so Anthony knew she was very upset and very angry. “Are you really, Anthony?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, politely.
“Anna,” his father said, “the boy is getting a mind of his own.”
“I don’t think that’s very funny, Robert.”
Anthony leaned back in his chair, hopefully. Are you going to fight? I’ve never really seen you fight. Will you say all the words? Will you yell?
“Anna, there had to be a time when the boy got enough of your telling him what to think and what to do.”
Almost whispering, his mother said, “I have tried to show the child the way to do things decently.”
Now, thought Anthony; oh boy, now. …
But his father’s tone was gentle and conciliatory. “You’ve done wonderfully well with him. Just look at him, brightest boy in his class, and a perfect gentleman.”
So, Anthony thought, his father didn’t want to argue today. But maybe … “I don’t like my school,” Anthony said aloud, pouting a little to show that he meant it. “Nothing but nuns. Can’t I go somewhere else next year, Father?”
Maybe that would do it, appeal directly, see what happens. Out of the corner of his eye—though he was careful not to look directly—he saw his mother move slightly against her chair. Here it comes, he thought with a silent giggle; that did it.
“No,” his mother said, “it’s a fine school.”
“We’ll see,” his father said. “We can probably find one you like better.”
His mother stood up. “Please finish your dinner, Anthony.” And she walked out of the room.
No words, no shouting—too bad.
His father rang for more wine. “And a glass for the boy.”
Anthony watched with great seriousness while his father half-filled a glass with water and then poured in the wine. The thick red thinned to a pale pink.
His father said: “Never let a woman upset you. Your mother’s mad, but she’ll get over it by tomorrow. And there’s no reason to let her temper spoil tonight.”
Anthony lifted his glass carefully, trying to imitate Ronald Colman. He even tried Ronald Colman’s half smile but he didn’t get it right. He’d have to practice.
“Look,” his father said, “I’m going to your grandfather’s. Why don’t you come along?”
“I’ve got homework.”
“Forget it. If I leave you here, your mother will probably eat you alive.”
“I’m not afraid of her,” Anthony said.
“We won’t even tell her we’re going. Save a lot of trouble that way.”
HIS FATHER said: “Anna ran us out, so we came over here.”
It wasn’t funny, Anthony thought, and it wasn’t especially true, but his grandfather’s eyes crinkled with amusement.
“You’re teaching the boy about women,” the Old Man said. He didn’t look right, Anthony thought. His color was strange, like a sunburn that is fading.
Anthony found a new copy of Redbook: there was a Nero Wolfe novel he wanted to read, all about smuggled jewels and the Spanish Civil War.
He had almost finished it when his father said, “What do you think about spending the night at the camp?”
“Sure,” Anthony said, “fine.”
His grandfather walked with them to the door. He must be very tired, Anthony thought. His feet didn’t seem firmly fixed to the ground, and when he walked he put them down extra hard, as if he weren’t quite sure where the surface was. And his hands didn’t swing alongside, but dangled straight down. Like they were tied on at his shoulders.
That was what it was like to be old—Anthony tried to imagine it for himself, tried to imagine his arms hanging that way, his heels hitting down that hard.
How did it feel being old? Was it like being tired all the time? Or was it a special kind of feeling, like swimming was a special feeling, and holding your breath was a special feeling. When you were old, were you different? Like—did a baby feel different, because it was a baby? He ought to know that but he couldn’t remember. So many things like that, answers he should know, but had somehow forgotten.
His grandfather said, “I’m about
ready for bed.” “Me too,” Anthony said.
His father snorted. “How do you expect to chase girls if you get tired so early?”
AFTER A few minutes Anthony climbed into the back of the car. Before he slipped into a heavy sleep, he began wondering how he was ever going to find out about girls. His school had nothing but boys and he knew all about them. In the toilet, where they urinated into a line of porcelain bowls, the boys always measured each other with their eyes and their fingers. Until Jerry Hanneman brought a ruler. “Here, you bastards, measure your thing against this, man.” So they had, and Jerry Hanneman was the winner, until— just this morning—they discovered that he was jamming the end deep into his belly. They stayed in the toilet so long and giggled so much that the nuns sent the janitor to get them. When he saw what they were doing, he showed his toothless gums in the dim light. “Used to spend hours doing that in the army, whole barracks, all measuring and bragging. … Now you kids get outa here, before the good sisters chew off my ass.”
His father was shaking him, and it was jet-black night all around, with only little pieces of stars stuck up in the sky. “We’re here.” He followed his father’s flashlight into the camp, and while his father lit the lamps and opened the windows, Anthony crawled into the nearest bed. At daylight he smelled coffee and staggered out, eyes half closed.
His father sat on the porch. It was still early—there was a flat haze rising from the bayou, and the cypresses on the other side were wrapped in strings of gray cloud. Nothing moved; only a ricebird called monotonously in the foggy distance.
“You sleep good?”
“Fine,” Anthony said. “I’ll be late for school.”
“And I’ll be late for work.” His father wore yesterday’s dark suit and white shirt, his tie tucked into the coat pocket. Those clothes looked funny, Anthony thought, against the bayou and the swamp.
“You want some coffee?”
“No,” Anthony said. “Yes.”
His father laughed. “Good answer.”
The coffee smelled of his grandfather’s house. The wide entrance hall, the curving stair, the fireplace with its flanking green velvet chairs—they swam before his eyes, blotted out by the cypress trees and the smeary windows and the maple furniture of the camp. That was homesickness, he thought. Only it wasn’t for his own home. “The coffee smells just like his house.”
The Condor Passes Page 24
