Celine

by Peter Heller

  It had begun with her mother, Barbara. She had done something unheard of in her society during the war: Soon after returning to New York from Paris just before its occupation, she had set in motion the divorce from her husband, Harry, who was the father of her three daughters. And then almost as soon as the Japanese surrendered, she had taken up with Fleet Admiral William F. “Bull” Halsey Jr., the five-star admiral who had commanded the Pacific’s Third Fleet and is considered by some to be the greatest fighting admiral America has ever had. They became lovers while he was still married—horrors!—and though Halsey’s wife was committed for life into what was then called an insane asylum, he would never divorce her. He visited her once a month until his death.

  Complicated. Her children called Barbara “Mummy,” but Hank and everyone else called her Baboo. WASPs have these names. Every year Baboo brought her three daughters to Fishers Island for a long summer season. Admiral Bill joined them. He was there, ostensibly, to visit his daughter who also had a house on the island, and he always kept a room at the club to keep up appearances, but everyone knew. Three and a half months, early June through the middle of September, and they repeated this sojourn for the next fourteen years, until his death. It was a longer stretch of summer than almost anyone else ever took, and it was because the island was a partial sanctuary, away from the more codified strictures of New York. On the island, in the summer, with the sound of waves heard through the screens of almost any house, and the weather sweeping in from the Atlantic with winds that flattened the dune grass and dusty miller, and thrashed the bayberry and squalled rain against the cedar shingles of the roofs, well. Certain allowances were made for the unpredictability of nature, both human and maritime, and people were generally more forgiving and relaxed. It didn’t hurt, either, that Baboo was almost universally adored. She had been the wild sister, the heavenly dancer, the legendary waltzer, the mischievous joker, the girl who had swum from Simmons Point to Ty Whitney’s dock, around the Race. Her father, Charles Cheney, had founded the Fishers Island Country Club for God’s sake. But. Well. Baboo’s domestic realignments were more than the idiosyncratic decisions of a well-bred young woman who had always been seen as warm-blooded. (Her mother, Mary Bell, was from California, after all, Santa Barbara, and had Spanish ancestry mixed with those flinty Scots.) Baboo’s decisions were more than peccadilloes; they were tectonic transgressions: She had initiated a divorce while her husband was still in Paris trying to safeguard Morgan Bank’s assets from the advancing Nazis. And then only five years later she took up with a professional soldier. Well, he was a five-star admiral, one of the towering commanders of the Pacific fleet, who stood beside General MacArthur on the USS Missouri at the Japanese surrender. Celine had the famous photo signed by Admiral Nimitz and the others. But Halsey was a bit rough-hewn and Not Our Class, Dear. NOCD, the mildly uttered and searing brand, always casually tossed off, one of the most vicious and eviscerating curses most people have never heard of. A final judgment of relative inferiority that no store of accomplishments or merit or even wealth can ever wipe away. Ludicrous. Halsey had the inborn class and dignity one would expect of a great commander, and he had more courage and native intelligence than almost any man alive.

  Baboo was still invited to the parties and the clam bakes, still brought her famous fried chicken and deviled eggs to the beach picnics, was still held in certain awe: She was the scion of the family that had founded the club and had lived a life abroad that was so dazzling and glamorous not even Hollywood could have done it justice. She was still adored, but from a certain distance now, as one would a colorful fish behind glass. She continued to command the devotion of friends who would never forsake her—Ginnie Ackerman, Ty Whitney, Penny Williams. But a subtle coolness overtook her, an almost imperceptible shouldering to the colder outer edges of the inner circle in which she had grown up. No one on earth is better at death by a thousand slights than the WASP aristocracy of the East Coast. Or death by very gradual hypothermia. It can be delivered in the most nuanced tone of voice: the barest lift into the next octave when speaking of personal matters, of, say, the troubles of someone else’s family—most listeners wouldn’t notice it. But it means the loss of the most natural and intimate lower register, the one reserved for only the most trusted cohort. The omission—Oh dear, how could I have forgotten?—of an invitation to a daughter’s wedding in Delaware. It was, it could feel like, the most devastating fall from grace. A woman of lesser character might have quietly killed herself, or worse, become bitter and vengeful. Baboo carried her changing status with a dignity and grace that made her more regal in the eyes of her children and, later, her grandchildren. She was the great love of our greatest admiral; she had skied the Streif at Hahnenkamm in one fell swoop; she spoke beautiful French and could compose an occasional poem of great wit and bawdy humor; her ancestors had founded this country. But she had the mildest sadness, like the faint scent of honeysuckle or the fluttering shadow of a bird at dusk, and it felt to Hank, as a child, noble and trustworthy, like the sadness of an exiled queen. Of course as a child he had no idea where it came from, but somehow it made her laughter more rich, her delight in him more poignant. And to her three true friends, it gave them access to a friendship and a loyalty that was more real than anything they might have found in their unforgiving society.

  The costs to Celine and her two sisters are hard to assess. They all attended Brearley, that very fancy private girls’ school on the Upper East Side, and they had no dearth of friends. It was as if the children of Barbara Cheney and Harry Watkins were offered conditional reprieve—after all, he had done nothing but be the youngest partner in the history of Morgan’s and escape Paris at the last possible second, on a bicycle he traded for his gorgeous Hispano Suiza when he realized the roads were too clogged with cars to get out in time—and he was too handsome for words, and a spectacular natural athlete—no, the children should be put on an indeterminate probation, the unspoken terms of which would be lifted when…well…when they were lifted. Probably when they married some up-and-coming banker from Williams.

  Celine did not get the memo.

  She begged to be sent away to a boarding school in Vermont where her beloved first cousin Rodney was a sophomore, and so Baboo relented and sent a scrawny fourteen-year-old girl off to Putney. The school had been started by an avowed sympathizer of the China experiment and was one of the first New England boarding schools to admit boys and girls in equal numbers. Not many: two hundred students on a dairy farm, on top of the most picturesque southern Vermont hill, with a view to folded ridges quilted with orchards, fields, sugar bush. The students, mostly from the New York and Boston elite, were required to do barn chores and cut firewood, which was a novelty they learned to relish.

  Celine rose at five a.m. in the winter dark with the ice chips of stars deeply set in the patterns of constellations for which she did not know the names but that were starting to seem like friends—the billion stars that breathed a faint luminosity onto the snowy hill, the snow so cold it squeaked underfoot as she walked to the big barn whose lights already burned. The clank of stanchions and scrape of shovels and shouts already drifted across the field; she entered the barn and was hit, then enveloped in the warm heavy scents of cows and manure and lime, rotting sweet silage and dusty hay and sawdust. Celine was converted. The Putney School did not have to emulate the precepts of the new Chinese collectives—of Communism—to be subversive: It was enough to take a girl from the Upper East Side and give her a silage fork and a wheelbarrow and ask her to sweat in a crowded barn with her friends as steam came off the cows and a below-zero North Country dawn doused the stars and washed the wooded hills in a tide of blue-gray and burning rose. That was enough.

  And then at ten a.m., after the first two classes, they put her on a wood bench in a creaky oak and pinewood hall and had her sing: Bach and Handel, hymns and four-part rounds. Not just for the glory of God but for life. For the joy of it. For being all together and creating music.
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br />   It was more powerful than any church. And better than any pamphlet or soap box at throwing an unflinching light on the values of patrician society. Poor Celine. Whatever wariness she aroused by simply being the offspring of Barbara Cheney Watkins, she compounded by returning to Manhattan for Thanksgiving break with an ax sticking out of her rucksack.

  And then she did the unthinkable. She missed her period.

  Then a second.

  She had just turned fifteen. And she was pregnant.

  Hank picked Pete and his mother up at Denver International Airport on the morning of September 22nd. On the way into town Celine asked Hank about his marriage, his poetry, his diet, all of which she thought would eventually come around. Pete sat in back, reassuring everyone with his dependable reserve. Hank had huge affection for his cryptic second dad. His first, who left for New Mexico when Hank was about to enter college, was the antithesis to Pete in almost every respect: Hank’s father was a gregarious storyteller, a great wit, he could do accents. He adored Edith Wharton and a good old-fashioned, and he didn’t know the first thing about building a boat. Hank loved him fiercely. It was almost like having two fathers from two different species. Hank appreciated the diversity.

  He turned off the highway and drove up into his neighborhood on the edge of the lake. Celine said, “The young woman, Gabriela, whose case we’re taking—her stepmother put her in her own apartment when she was eight. And then when she was in college her father went missing in Yellowstone. Presumed dead.”

  Hank passed a truck loaded with crates of live chickens. “And?” he said. He was interested.

  “She grew up and raised a son mostly on her own and became quite a good fine-arts photographer. A single mom.”

  Hank laughed, he couldn’t help it. His mother was a truly wily investigator, but when it came to trying to disguise a message to her own son she was hopeless. He knew that she wanted to be a grandmother more than anything on earth.

  “Wow,” he said simply. “She devoted her life to her art and decided to go ahead and have a kid.”

  “I know,” Celine said. She patted his knee.

  The tour of the camper was perfunctory. Hank pulled the Tacoma long-bed pickup around to the front of the house. Celine always thought it was a wonderful spot, with a big view to the west of water and mountains, and it was five minutes from downtown’s Union Station and the Tattered Cover Book Store. Until the spring he had lived in the house with his wife, Kim, but she was gone now in a trial separation—partly, she said, because she was sick of trying to be married to someone who was away half the time on assignment. Well.

  The camper was one of those that fitted in the bed of the truck and extended over the cab. Hank unlocked the little back door and invited his mother and Pa in at a crouch and showed them how to unlock the latches and pop the top. He’d installed pressurized struts so it didn’t take much more than a gentle push to lift the roof about three feet. Now they could all stand and light poured in through the lemon canvas. Celine uttered a happy cry. “Oh, look,” she said. “I thought we’d have to crouch like when we lived in a shoe.”

  “When did we live in a shoe?” Pete said. Hank stared at him in wonder: He speaks!

  “That time we slept in the back of the hearse. When we found Jerry, the Elvis impersonator.”

  “Ahh,” said Pete.

  Pete wore a tweed newsboy cap, the kind worn by Welsh Mountaineers and the guys driving the butcher trucks in movies about 1940s New York. His bushy gray hair stuck out around it so that it looked a little like a life raft riding a choppy sea of furry whitecaps. He also wore a corded charcoal wool vest, the kind loggers and trappers used to wear. Hank never stopped being intrigued by the man he could never get used to calling his stepfather. He thought Pete wore the cap in solidarity with the proletariat who no longer seemed to exist. Or maybe it was simply water resistant and warm and kept the sun out of his eyes. Pete stood back holding a steno pad and took notes on the operations of the camper. He was a very fine woodworker, and he had been a small-boat builder growing up on North Haven; Hank could see his appreciation of how all the storage and utility compartments in the camper fit together—the cabin was like a small yacht.

  Celine politely listened as Hank explained the propane shutoff for the two-burner stove and little furnace and fridge, the operation of the hot water heater and outdoor shower—“It’s already getting chilly up there,” Hank said, “I doubt you’ll use the shower. But anyhow, here.” Celine glanced at Pete, and Hank saw the slightest smile pass between them. What does he know? We come from northern people, they seemed to say. They were still in love, that was always so clear. With a pang, he thought of his own wife. He quickly banished her image, along with the image of his mother and Pete prancing around the Montana woods naked.

  “Hank, what season is it up there?” Celine said, running a hand over the quilt on the cab-over bunk above her. Hank had given them his moose and bear quilt, to get them in the mood.

  He looked at her, puzzled. “It’s—it’s early fall, Mom, same as here.”

  “No, I mean is it deer and elk season yet? Or what?”

  “Ah, that wouldn’t be for, like, another month. Probably archery now, and upland game birds—grouse, turkey, partridge.”

  She bit her lower lip. “A bow is so cumbersome. Okay, can I borrow your twelve-gauge?”

  Hank stared at her.

  “And an orange hunting vest. And a hat, too. Do you have one of those funny neon-orange ones with flaps?”

  He stared at her.

  “Second thought,” she said, “we may still be up there in a month. I better take your .308, too. I always felt more comfortable with high-powered rifles.”

  He stared at her. Celine ruffled his hair.

  “Hunters go everywhere. They get lost. They tromp across anyone’s land, traipse right past anyone’s front windows, apologize later. It’s also a very good reason to be in a place. Perfect guise.” Her eyes crinkled. “Furthermore, hunters are well armed. Always a plus, I’ve found.”

  When they drove away that afternoon Hank was minus a duffel full of hunting clothes, two turkey calls, and more than half his armory.

  FIVE

  When Celine found out at fifteen that she was pregnant she saw only darkness ahead and she prayed. When Celine prayed, she reverted to her beloved French. Her first language and her secret dialect with her two sisters and apparently with God. She and Bobby and Mimi spoke rapidly, in the colloquial French taught to them by their nannies, and they could conduct a running commentary on the people around them in the middle of a party, standing so close to their subjects that they might be touching, and do so in such a way—with small smiles covering laughter, with subtle eye rolls, with pursings of lips and biting of tongues—that their targets never knew. Of course most of the children in their circle studied French, and most of the parents had, too, but the rapidity and cadence and peculiar turns of phrase left no hope of decoding. Now she knelt by her bunk in her dorm at the Putney School, an old clapboard cottage with a little bell tower, and she prayed for her future child.

  Mon Dieu, le Roi du ciel, appuyé sur ta puissance infinie et sur tes promesses…

  She prayed fast and she prayed hard, and the sobs that racked her frame as she knelt did not slow her down, but she did not pray for guidance. For she had made her decision.

  That morning she had seen the school doctor on the pretext of having a splitting headache. He was a kind elderly country GP of the old school, a man who had retired but had taken the sinecure as school physician because he could not imagine not helping people in need of care. Celine breezed in and sat on the edge of the examination table and tilted her chin up with pride and looked straight at the old man with steady gray eyes and said, “I think I am pregnant”—in this case he was the perfect shepherd.

  He was not a fundamentalist in any way except in the interpretation of his oath, and he generally took the Long View. He had seen pretty much everything one human being might do t
o another. Dr. Watt examined Celine in the two-bed infirmary above the assembly hall and told her he had little doubt that she was halfway through her first trimester. At fifteen, Celine seemed too skinny to carry her own frame, much less another life. She had the gangly coltish gait, the high cheeks, prominent nose, and large eyes of a girl who was not beautiful, nor perhaps even pretty, but who discerning adults could tell would grow up to one day be gorgeous, even startling. But now she was only a waif who kept a plush mouse named Myriam in a tiny basket under her bed and who spent half her time at the swimming hole below the barn rescuing moths trapped on the surface of the black water. And she was a long way from home, and she was watching the life she had planned as a secret agent and resistance fighter flicker and sputter and go blank like the broken ribbons of film in the school’s Friday-night projector.

  Under the nonjudgmental ministrations of the old doctor her guard finally cracked. Her lips trembled as she buttoned the waist of her loose wool pants and slipped on her leather lace-up boots, and she hung her head and her hair covered her face, but the kindly Dr. Watt saw a tear hit the linoleum. He tossed the towel he’d just used to dry his hands into a wicker basket and put a hand—a hand that was arthritic from building woodsheds and auguring sugar taps—on her thin quaking shoulder and said, “You will have choices to make. You will want to talk with your parents today.”