Narrow Rooms

by James Purdy

  “You’ll never be able to stand it in the world,” Vance finally gave judgment when Sidney had described his “reception.”

  “But, Vance, God Almighty, it’s always you who were telling me I’ve got to go out and face people . . . Now I’ve gone and done it, you’re cross and put out. When even your mentor, Dr. Ulric, is behind my move!”

  “Being shut up with a moody, sick boy and his domineering, rich mother is not my idea of getting out and meeting people,” Vance snapped. “And you have no training to be a male nurse which is just what you’ll be.”

  “Well thanks, Vance, for your encouragement. . . . At least Irene does not consider that I will be what you call me.” His face grew taut with anger.

  “So you call her Irene already?” Vance observed.

  “I tried, Vance, to tell you a little about some of the things that happened to me in prison. . . . You say I ought to go out and meet people. Maybe my trouble is I have met too many people while you are the one who’s never been out in the world and seen what it’s like. . . . And you don’t want to see I have changed . . . So taking care of a young man won’t be hard on me after what I went through. . . .”

  “You never liked taking care of me when I was a baby . . . Mother told me how nauseated you got when you had to change my diapers, how fretful and restless you were when she left me alone with you . . .”

  “You were a very ill-­tempered and irritable brat,” Sidney smiled in spite of himself. “Just the way you are now. . . . But, Vance, prison took all the starch out of me . . . Don’t you see? And I’ll feel I’m doing some good taking care of this boy . . . Besides I used to know him . . .”

  As he said this both young men exchanged eloquent looks with one another. The words “the renderer” were on both their lips, for everybody knew that Gareth had also been his pupil.

  Partly because the stairs had made him realize he was not so robust as he had been when he was a star football player, Sidney had resigned himself to going by limousine to Mrs. Vaisey’s, though the stuffiness of both the chauffeur and car made him wish he had walked.

  He got more than a little panicky though when he alit from the car and stood before the five-­pillared white house. Well, he alibied to himself, one is always a bit nervous on the threshold of a new job. But something else warned him, and he believed his sudden flare-­up of “heart-­trouble” (which the prison doctor had spoken to him about) had everything to do with the young man with the indefinable ailment whom he was to care for.

  “I can’t tell you what a weight has been taken off my mind,” Irene Vaisey greeted him as she came out on the endless expanse of the porch and, with a glance at the chauffeur, dismissed him. “I’ve felt positively refreshed, even elated, knowing you will be here to look after him. . . . We won’t ask more of you than that, Mr. De Lakes . . .”

  Sidney gave her a look of such questioning and uncertain wonder that she turned her eyes away for a moment. She was the first woman he had talked with for, well, he could not remember actually when. His mother—almost that far back.

  “Have you had breakfast, Mr. De Lakes?”

  “I thought we were to call one another by our . . . first names,” he broke out of his bashfulness. “Yes, my brother Vance prepared me a little something as a matter of fact.”

  “But you could stand with something else, Sidney?” She laughed and took his hand. “Certainly a cup of coffee?”

  “I’m not supposed to drink any, but actually I would like a cup.”

  Irene Vaisey rang a small bell whose voice thrilled with a pure silver tone which he had never heard before.

  A girl dressed in a highly starched apron and little white-­ frilled cap entered with a tray on which a solid silver pot of coffee rested, and two plates filled with cornbread and bacon.

  “Just taste a little of each, why don’t you?” At a motion of her hand they both seated themselves.

  “You will think me a fool,” she began in a very much altered voice, “when I keep telling you what a burden is lifted by your coming here.”

  A short sob escaped from her. “Excuse me,” she said and reached in a fold of her long dress for a handkerchief. “Gareth’s father would have had his heart broken had he lived to see him like this . . . For Gareth was his favorite.”

  “But he will recover, Mrs. Vaisey . . . Irene,” Sidney stretched out his hand toward her, but she did not see it, and he let it fall to his lap.

  “You’re ready for another cup of coffee, I see,” she said after a pause during which she considered his opinion.

  “The task I want you to help me with this morning, Sidney, is actually the most difficult one of all. . . . It is to . . . assist him manage his breakfast . . . You see he refuses to eat . . .”

  Snatches of Vance’s warnings and dark suspicions crossed Sidney’s mind.

  “I will do most of the task this morning, but if you could from time to time help him . . . chew and swallow just a little of his breakfast . . . It would be a good beginning . . .”

  Sidney nodded and tried to look confident.

  “I know you’re not squeamish,” she proceeded. “I know too you have been hurt and you will be able to understand others who have been badly damaged also.”

  She stood up then and he followed her up the steps.

  “You need not go so slow,” he spoke directly behind her. “My condition is not that bad.”

  “Just the same, we won’t hurry, Sidney. We have no fixed schedule in this house.”

  A flood of orange sunlight rushed upon them as they reached the upstairs landing. The door to Gareth’s room was wide open, but a curtain of heavy silk hanging between door and room protected the interior from visibility.

  Mrs. Vaisey flung back the curtain and motioned Sidney to go in first.

  Gareth was seated in the same chair he had been in the previous day. Special care had been made with his grooming, and he wore a jacket and brand-­new tie. In his right hand he held a fresh-­cut autumn white rose, which it was clear someone had insisted he hold and which he was wanting to get rid of. Mrs. Vaisey took the flower from his fingers and kissed him on the mouth.

  “You remember our good friend Sidney, dear.”

  Gareth moved his head in assent.

  A man of about thirty entered the room now with a heavy tray which he deposited on the table beside Gareth, who looked at the man fixedly and then gave him what appeared to be an imperious look of contemptuous dismissal. The servant left without a word.

  Irene and Sidney had seated themselves, and had anyone passed through the hall and looked beyond the fluttering curtain he would have thought they were waiting for a service to commence.

  “I am sure, Gareth,” Mrs. Vaisey broke the silence, “that you are going to be very happy with Sidney. I can feel it, dearest.”

  Gareth turned his large, luminous eyes on the new “companion.”

  “Garey,” Sidney began, his voice almost bass with strain, “though I have been gone some considerable time and there have been changes in both our lives . . .” He broke off in an excess of emotion. “I will do my best for you, you know that,” he managed to finish.

  Gareth turned away from both his visitors.

  “Shall we begin your breakfast,” Mrs. Vaisey’s voice also shook, and her eyes rested on the carpet and not on her son. Looking up she saw Gareth shaking his head angrily, and his left hand suddenly disarranged his perfectly tied cravat.

  “But you must eat, sweetheart . . . You must keep up your strength . . . And if you are good this morning, Mr. De Lakes will help you also with other things. . . . See what a kind and friendly man he is! He understands our problem, dear, also . . . He has not been immune either . . . to problems . . .”

  At that moment Sidney’s spine froze for the youth let out a cry like that of a wild animal which feels a bullet graze its skull. Mrs. Vaisey closed her eyes.

  “You must and shall eat,” she said after a pause, and rose.

  The youth shook h
is head, or what now appeared to Sidney as his mane for with his shock of yellow hair he was so like some forest beast.

  “We will not put it on, dear heart, if you will only eat.”

  Another savage cry came from his throat, which was distended with veins and arteries standing out in clear outlines.

  Irene rang, and the servant who had been standing outside returned with a kind of strait jacket, which he quickly and expertly threw over the young man.

  Sidney felt faint; ice cold drops of sweat fell from his armpits as they had done in prison. But he was determined to stick it out, he did not wish to return to Vance in failure, and furthermore he wanted somehow to be near this strange troubled boy who did not want food to sustain life.

  “Just one piece of bread, that’s all you need eat, darling . . . Just one crumb then, see, from my hands . . .”

  With consummate skill Mrs. Vaisey forced open her son’s mouth and placed on his tongue a piece of bread, and then pushed his jaws shut.

  “Chew, Gareth . . . Chew!”

  His mouth dripping with saliva, he made a supreme effort to masticate the bread while his wide, terrified eyes roved in the direction of Sidney.

  Suddenly he moved his head vigorously toward the new “caretaker.”

  “You wish Sidney to give you your breakfast?”

  Gareth’s eyes widened eloquently.

  “I believe he wishes you to give him his breakfast,” Mrs. Vaisey turned to Sidney.

  Sidney rose, and looking at Mrs. Vaisey for encouragement and instruction, he lifted a piece of bread to the boy’s mouth. He accepted it and chewed the bread.

  “Another, perhaps?” Mrs. Vaisey inquired in a faint voice, hardly that of a whisper.

  Sidney had already put another piece of bread in his mouth. He chewed and swallowed this also. Finally a whole slice of bread had been thus laboriously fed to him.

  Then as Sidney was withdrawing his hand, the boy took Sidney’s index and middle finger and held them with his bared teeth. Mrs. Vaisey immediately went up to the boy, but there was at present no indication of a wish to hurt or bite, he merely held the fingers gently in his mouth. It was Sidney’s benign calm attitude which prevented Mrs. Vaisey from doing more at the moment. Indeed she waited as calm and resigned as if she had discovered the two of them at prayer.

  Without warning Gareth released his hold on Sidney’s fingers, and the new “companion” slipped back away and sat down in a chair which Irene had quickly placed within his reach.

  Mrs. Vaisey was busily wiping Gareth’s face and mouth free of crumbs and spittle. It was as if she dared not now look at Sidney. Yet finally she did turn from her “charge,” and advancing a few steps in the direction of the “caretaker” she addressed him almost in a singing tone: “You are priceless . . . I cannot believe my good fortune if you will only stay . . . I had never dreamed anyone like you would come to us . . . I will always be in your debt.”

  She then left the room and remained outside the billowing curtain. He barely was listening to her sobs and cries for Gareth was gazing at his new companion with a look of such intense and terrible command that Sidney, deaf now to the happy grief of the mother outside, approached the boy and quickly bending down kissed him on the mouth, a kiss that was as quickly returned.

  Sidney came down the endless succession of stairs extremely slowly. Irene Vaisey was waiting at the foot of the staircase, her left hand, which bore an immense yellow stone, was resting on the ancient newel post.

  “You look terribly tired, my dear fellow.” She spoke in her rather hard dry voice now. The look of worry and concern for him was wonderfully soothing.

  “I’m more . . . happy than tired,” he told her.

  She waited a moment for his remark to settle with her, then replied: “You have every reason to be.”

  Irene led the way into the dining hall, and from there into a small adjoining alcove. “We’ll be more comfortable in here,” she explained. “You’re positively sure you’re all right?” she returned to the subject of his health.

  As a matter of fact he was trembling all over, but his health was not the source of his agitation.

  She rang a bell (in this house every room had a bell for summoning somebody).

  “Will you have some hot chocolate?”

  “Oh, anything,” he spoke almost deliriously she felt. Then he smiled and this smile meant more to her than anything she had received from anybody in years, as her son’s kiss had meant to him.

  The maid came again and Mrs. Vaisey issued rather lengthy instructions, none of which he even heard.

  “If you will stay,” her voice reached him as if from some parapet, “you will make me the happiest Mother in the world. . . . You don’t know what happiness was mine when I saw Gareth took to you at once . . . You see he could never bear anybody except me even to touch him until today. . . . He let you feed him . . . an entire piece of bread! . . . I do believe he would have eaten the entire loaf from your hands.”

  The girl brought in two trays loaded with a hot chocolate-­colored drink, rolls, and tiny silver receptacles of whipped cream by each cup, starched stiff linen napkins, hand-­painted china cups. Sidney drank greedily, his mouth stained with the chocolate drink and whipped cream which he consumed separately.

  “Whatever you wish in the way of remuneration,” she began now on more practical considerations, “ask, simply ask . . . Where he is concerned nothing is too much, don’t you agree?”

  Then almost without warning, and as in a film where the scene and time sequence change precipitously, and with her voice falling into a low register, she said, “You may or may not know the story of Gareth, but let me tell you to prevent misunderstanding and correct any garbled version you may have listened to. . . . Before our calamity . . .” she had begun, but here the maid had come in to collect the trays and was dismissed by a mere look from her, “we had had no idea Gareth was keeping such bad company, or that he was using, well, a certain drug. We had no inkling of any of that.”

  Sidney found himself, to his own consternation, breaking almost into a grin, which she may not have seen, for she went ahead with what she wished him to know: “His father and his two twin brothers were going to get the new horse from the stables over in Virginia. Gareth was the best driver, you may know, and of course he was the oldest of my sons . . .”

  “Who were his bad company, ma’am, may I inquire?” Sidney interrupted. She paused only long enough to ignore his question, and continued:

  “I begged them not to go that day. All their horoscopes were bad in the newspaper, for one thing. I told them I would drive. They paid no attention to me, Sidney. None whatsoever. . . . It happened at high noon. Gareth had been smoking this drug his friends had been giving him. But he must have seen the train coming, nonetheless, grass or no grass . . . How could he have failed to?”

  She stopped and looked at his mouth, perhaps to see if it moved in the strange smile she had caught him in before.

  “But I’m a bit ahead of my story. . . . The actual wreck was caused, a witness claims, by a race. Yes, that is correct, a race. A young man riding a horse, according to this observer, passed our truck several times, and the rider is said to have taunted Gareth, shouted abuse at him, and dared him to race him to the train crossing. Another motorist also later told me the same story, but he refused nonetheless to appear at the inquest. (I disremember his name too after all this time.) ‘Let’s race, Garey! Let’s beat the train!’ the horseman is said to have exclaimed. ‘I’ll race you to the train tracks and beat you . . . Will you race me,’ he kept calling, ‘or are you chicken?’ And so they raced, Sidney, raced the train. And the horseback rider got across the tracks in time, and won the race, and me and mine you see did not . . .”

  “But who was this . . . rider?” Sidney wondered, absorbed in her account.

  Irene sat for a while in deep silence. He was about to repeat his question when she replied: “We never found out. . . . Indeed now Gareth claims he does
not remember any ‘race’ or any ‘rider.’ ”

  Sidney looked away from her despairing and anguished face.

  “There may be many trying things for you, Sidney,” she began again, “should you decide to take this responsibility upon your shoulders . . . I do not want to mitigate the fact that there may be unpleasantness, and rather a lot of it. Even when he was . . . himself, he was a difficult, headstrong, and, yes, passionate boy.”

  She watched him drink the hot beverage and eat a large sweet roll heaped with strawberry glaze. He ate, she realized, in order to have something to do, not through appetite.

  “You talk as if I was Vance,” he finally spoke with a full mouth, and with a trace of anger in his speech. “As I tried to tell him, prison had everything. They gave me many gifts, Mrs. Vaisey” (he fell away again from using her Christian name). “I’m broken, I guess. They broke me . . . But I can do all you expect or Gareth expects partly because I guess I am broken.”

  “You are not broken, Sidney. You are perfect.”

  He shook his head dubiously, but again he smiled.

  “Then I can expect everything of you?” She sounded, he thought, almost like a conspirator.

  “Absolutely,” he replied at once. “Where he is concerned—where you are concerned—everything.”

  “As I said before,” she thanked him with her eyes, “it’s more than I could ever have hoped for.”

  She picked up her own cup of the chocolate mixture for the first time, brought it to her mouth, and without having tasted it, put it down again noiselessly.

  “Do you think later on, Sidney, you might even stay day and night? . . . Take up your residence here, that is . . .”

  He hesitated. “I don’t know what Vance would say to that . . . Night and day . . . You see I owe him so much. It was him got me out of prison . . . He went to the Gover-­ nor . . .”

  “I know,” Mrs. Vaisey said coldly. “But Vance has Dr. Ulric . . . Doesn’t he?” she added, at a look of confusion from the “caretaker.”

  “But it is right,” she continued, “to begin even more slowly with you, Sidney, than we did with the others who took care of Gareth . . . They were after all not ‘called’ to be in charge of him . . . So we will expect you then only during the day for the time being . . . After that we shall see . . .”