“Morgan, Pip.” And, near: “If you’re not being private, may I join you?”
Morgan took her hand (he could do that). Then suddenly he thought of Henry James: a pictorial impression of those grandly eloquent outdoor scenes in James’s novels: a summer day—a carpet of grass—a long vista—three people strolling together into the future of the story.
It must be noted that Julia and Caroline did not idle away the whole of that summer. There was a limit, they said, to the amount of time one could spend “just lollygagging around, being frivolous.”
They enrolled in two Hollis Academy Summer School courses: Advanced Oral and Written French, and Prose and Poetry of the American Civil War. For five weeks, from early July into August, Monday through Friday, nine A.M. to noon, they were in the classroom. Each course required a hefty amount of homework. Julia established a work/play schedule and rarely broke from it. Caroline was flexibility itself. “Mood” was her declared time-piece: “I’m in the mood to study.” Or: “I’ll study later; right now I’m in the mood to play.” Exactly which mood she would be in largely depended on what the young crowd was going to be doing on a given afternoon or evening, and on whether or not Mitch would be a participant. (One day, Morgan overheard her tell Julia that she wasn’t “in the mood” to do whatever it was Julia had suggested might be fun, and Julia, in a rare display of sisterly irritation, exploded: “Callie! Just say ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ Give up that mood talk. It’s so high horse. So Greta Garbo!” Morgan wondered: would there be a quarrel? No. Only a silence, sensed as thick, punctuated perhaps by a glare from Caroline. Marvelously, Julia’s outburst had its effect: from that day on, Caroline trashed—“mood.”)
Early in August, Mitch vanished from the scene.
For the bulk of the week, Morgan had been in New York, but as usual, he was back home for the weekend. And as usual, on Saturday, cars came and went, bearing, in varying numbers, members of the young crowd. Some stayed just long enough to say they’d be back later. Others remained and played tennis or simply flopped down under a shade tree and talked. Some walked in the woods. Some took off their shoes and waded in the creek like kids, the girls holding up their skirts, the lads attending them, making sure they didn’t lose their footing. Some sought the creek’s upstream pool, there to be entertained by frogs and crayfish and turtles, armored beetles and Jesus spiders, red-winged blackbirds, a chance bittern fishing in the shallows. Seen at a glance from the house, and devoid of sound, the several pictures of the young crowd’s activities were distant enough to seem to be timeless, dream-like. And for a while, for an hour or so, that was the way it would be. But then, after a while, one group would become restless and pull itself together and collect its scattered possessions—shoes and socks and purses, tennis rackets and a hat or two—and recross the lawn to their cars, and drive away. And in a little while, another group would arrive. Who now? the ones who had remained would ask.
Of Mitch, always heretofore a conspicuous presence, Morgan, on this Saturday, saw no sign. “What’s become of him?” he asked Maud that evening.
“I’ve been waiting for a quiet time to tell you,” she said. “As of last Wednesday evening, he’s a thing of the past.”
“Oh? What happened?”
“I’m not sure. It’s something of a mystery…. He picked up Callie after lunch on Wednesday to take her sailing, and you know me: just before they drove off, I asked my usual question, ‘What time can I expect you back?’—and Callie said five-thirty, that she wanted to get started on her homework before dinner. She repeated it, five-thirty at the very latest. A few minutes after they left, Bruce Wilson arrived in his car to take Julia—you’ll never guess to do what.”
Morgan smiled: “I’m afraid to try.”
“Bruce’s springer spaniel, Pansy’s her name, had had six puppies, and Bruce wanted Julia to see them right away.”
“You’re right, I’d never have guessed…. So we’ve got Caroline off sailing with Mitch, and Julia off puppying with Bruce, and what about you, sweet? How did you spend the afternoon?”
“Errands.” Maud made a face. “I went into town and did a pile-up of niggling errands. Enthralling. I got back shortly before six. Callie hadn’t returned, but I didn’t think to worry. Not then. Julia and Bruce were on the terrace. They asked me to join them, and I did. They told me all about the puppies. Julia was ecstatic about them. I do like Bruce. He’s intelligent. Peaceful, too.” She smiled: “He sits still! The Wylie boy came by the other day and I was a wreck after spending five minutes with him. It was like being with someone having a fit—one hand scratching his head, the other twisting a shirt button, both legs—he was sitting beside me—both legs jigging up and down a mile a minute.” She stopped; then: “I guess what I want to emphasize about Julia’s and Bruce’s company is how adult it was, how pleasant it was for me just to be with them, drinking lemonade, feeling the day cool down—it had been so hot. It was lovely. So lovely that I didn’t realize how late it was. I was really startled when Bruce looked at his watch and said it was nearly seven, that he’d have to hurry along or he’d be late getting home for dinner. And of course, right away I thought of Callie…. While Julia was seeing Bruce out, I called the Eagle Lake Club. The steward told me Callie and Mitch had left the club about a quarter to five. It only takes about half an hour to get from there to here, and, oh Morgan, I thought of an auto accident—something—something serious enough to prevent Callie from following our rule about calling home; checking in. But I kept my head. I talked it over with Julia and Tessa, and we agreed to wait until eight before we did anything—alerted the police or called Mitch’s parents. Tessa kept up the line that whatever had happened to Callie and Mitch would turn out to be no more than general silliness. She urged Julia and me to go ahead with dinner—by now it was well past seven—so Julia and I went into the dining room—”
Morgan imagined them in the large, fine room, not sitting at the long table used for dinner parties, but at the more intimate round table set up by the double bank of high north windows, three places laid, flowers, the beauty of ritual order, Ralph lying as usual in a mannerly way near Maud’s chair, night descending, fireflies, like earthly stars, beginning to light the outside darkness, napkins unfolded: the strain: Caroline unaccounted for.
“—and we’d no more than sat down,” Maud was saying, “than Julia started in again, telling me not to worry, Tessa chiming in as she served us, and it annoyed me, and I told them that if Callie and Mitch weren’t in any difficulty, if they really were all right, then their thoughtlessness was inexcusable, and I meant to have it out with them—especially with Callie—the minute they returned. Julia waited until Tessa left the room and then, Morgan, she took my hand and looked at me so deeply, right into my eyes, and asked me, begged me not to confront Callie when she returned, to let her see Callie first—”
“How exactly did she put it?” Morgan interrupted.
“Oh—‘Please, Mother, please let me handle this with Callie; please, let me go to the door when she comes, please.’ Over and over. She wouldn’t let go. I don’t remember saying a word, but I must have nodded—done something she took for consent, because she thanked me and let go of my hand and began to eat her dinner. I was so damned upset…. Anyhow, at about ten to eight—I’d just finished composing in my head what I was going to say to the police—Ralph got to his feet and headed for the front hall and Julia said he’d heard a car; that it would be Callie and Mitch. “I’ll see to it, Mother,” she told me—completely in command, Morgan, and as if by right. That was what was so impressive about her, what made me let her have her way—that she made me feel she had the greater right to cope with the situation than I had. And then I realized why: the twin element: the mirroring way she and Callie come together when they’re jubilant or when there’s trouble—how each one becomes the other—and that I shouldn’t, mustn’t interfere with it. Does that sound crazy?”
“No. No, Maud.” He would have liked to have said more: like
d to have told her that he thought her intuition marvelous: that after all these years of knowing her, she could still amaze him by her courage to act on her intuitions. But she was speaking again:” I did go into the hall, over to the front window by the library door. Julia was standing with Ralph under the portico. All the outdoor lights were on, so I could see everything. And in a few seconds, Mitch’s car rounded the bend in the lane, coming on really fast. It made me furious, the speed. He pulled up into the turnaround—stopped just long enough for Callie to open the car door and get out. Believe me: no one’s ever exited a car faster or slammed the door harder than Callie did. And then Mitch drove off. Not a word. Just drove away. And Callie ran to Julia. I only had a glimpse of her, but enough to see that she was terribly angry and that she looked—unarranged. Sort of messy. She said something to Julia, I couldn’t hear what, and then the two of them came through the front door—they didn’t see me—and bolted up the stairs, down the hall to Callie’s room. Tessa came to me, relieved, like I was. Then she went back to the kitchen and I went into the library and poured a drink and—”
“Waited.” Morgan finished the sentence for her. “How long?”
“It seemed like years. About twenty minutes.”
“And?”
“Julia finally joined me. She told me Callie would be down in a few minutes. She was darling, Morgan. She kissed me and thanked me and she said everything was all right, honestly all right, she could promise me it was. Beyond that, she didn’t say anything, and I didn’t ask…. Then Callie appeared, looking very tidy. She’d changed her dress. She’d clearly been crying and she was serious. Head-to-toe serious. She said she wanted to apologize for what had happened, for worrying me, that she was truly sorry, and then her eyes filled with tears and she said, ‘I want you to know I haven’t done anything to disgrace us.’”
Tears, now, were in Maud’s eyes.
In Morgan’s. It was the inclusiveness of “us” that did it. In the fullness of his own feelings he sat, wordless, loving Caroline, lost in thought about what it all meant—meant to Caroline: how little there was left for him and Maud, parentally, to do. Finally, looking at Maud, he asked: “Is there anything else I ought to know?”
“Not that I can think of,” Maud answered, her eyes still brimming. “Callie and I hugged each other, and then she said she must apologize to Tessa too, and she went to the pantry, and Tessa, bless her heart, came back with her from the pantry to Julia and me and kind of roped us all together and made us go into the dining room and eat something.” Maud gestured—a shooing motion of her hand: “Now you know everything I know. Oh—except that at bedtime, when Callie kissed me good night, she said ‘I’m finished with Mitch.’ That was all she said about him.”
Ah. He and Maud didn’t speculate about what, maybe, had happened; it would have been feckless to do so. They shared unspoken images, born of experience and old memories, of (undoubtedly) some young, urgent, intense experimental physicalness—what used to be called “heavy necking”—Caroline’s refusal, in the end, to go all the way. They did believe she had refused.
The next day, Morgan let Caroline know that he knew all about last Wednesday night’s episode. He wasn’t lofty about it; he didn’t have to be because Caroline told him she was sure he would know, and that she was glad he knew, that she had learned a lesson from it, and that most of all she was very disgusted with herself for being such a “dunce” about Mitch. She never volunteered any particulars about what had happened—about why Mitch was a thing of the past—and Julia, who surely knew precisely why, never, out of twinship loyalty, dropped a hint.
For Morgan and Maud, Mitch’s disappearance from the scene comprised the summer’s mystery.
“Grandfather Leigh,” was the way Julia and Caroline addressed their maternal grandfather.
“Doctor Leigh,” Morgan formally called him. That, or—“Sir.”
“Father,” Maud honored him.
He continued to fly in and out of their lives like a large bird, a heron or a hawk or some other important aerial specimen sighted usually through binoculars, on the wing. At least once a month he would come for lunch or dinner. He had a maddening way of arriving somewhat in advance of the hour he was due, thereby shortening the length of time he could, “in conscience,” stay. Nothing much had changed about him in the ten years since Mrs. Leigh’s death. At age seventy-three, he still was meticulously tailored; still wore jaunty polka-dot bow ties; still spoke in a boomy, authoritative voice, always confident of what he was saying; was still healthy, robust and vigorous; was still going strong as an influential physician and surgeon. His hands were as steady as ever. A good while back he had sold the Hatherton house (Morgan had salvaged the beautiful vine-and-leaf-carved library mantel and had it installed in Maud’s sitting room) and bought, in Cleveland, a commodious apartment in a newly erected, arrestingly “modern” building fronted on Lake Erie. He kept a Finnish manservant named Tauno, a fiftyish general factotum, and he led a remarkably active social life. Morgan and Maud were continually surprised at how often they encountered him at concerts, at the theater, occasionally at a dinner party given by a mutual friend. He was known for being a “regular” at large functions of a civic kind: fund-raisers for this or that “Cause,” and at benefit affairs on behalf of the clinic, the art museum, the Cleveland Symphony, etc. Men of his age, men of the genial, clubby sort, liked him. So did widows of his age, and some younger women—jolly ones with Rubenesque com plexions and figures—whom he escorted here and there, always with a broad, fair-weather kind of style.
His fondness of Caroline and Julia was not to be doubted, nor was the genuiness of his interest in them and in what was currently happening to them. But he never had the time to give to such details of their lives as required patience or that held the threat of involving him in extended ways that might possibly mean changing or rearranging his prescribed plans. His agenda (he would have you know) was a fixed thing that mattered: one not easily altered. So his relationship to them (and theirs to him), however well presented and nicely framed, was limited; lacking in depth and color. Still, he did maintain a position in their lives, which position, for its understood symbolic value, meant something to him, and to them.
As much as he had it in him to love, he loved Maud. And Maud, in her honoring way, loved him. They were not close. For Maud, the ghost of her mother always stood between them. They were extremely careful with one another, careful about what they said to each other, and how they said it. The sadness of their circumspection lent to their relationship a serious, almost desperate strength—gave it a certain finite reality, affirmed by their common blood and by memories that dated back to the time when Doctor Leigh was a young father and Maud a child—resonant memories that were uncomplex and innocent and optimistic. (Seeing them together now, Morgan would often marvel at the versatility of love, at how much a thing of a thousand aspects love is.)
For himself, Morgan would have preferred the vitality of an active aversion to Doctor Leigh rather than what he did feel about him, which was only a dry and lifeless toleration. Between him and Doctor Leigh, manners were their means of getting along—their chariot of transport on the dusty in-law road.
The last two weeks of August and the first week of September were given over to “preparations” (Tessa’s word) for Julia’s and Caroline’s departure for college. Clothes were Maud’s and the twins’ consuming concern. They talked clothes around the clock. Dresses and skirts and blouses and sweaters and coats and all the attendant trappings of scarves and shoes and gloves, etc. Again and again they went into Cleveland to shop. (“They’re obsessed,” Morgan told his father. “I’m out of it! I don’t exist. Clothes are all.”)
But when it came to the matter of choosing which “things” they would take away with them, Julia and Caroline consulted him. Drew him in. Which small, cherished objects from their rooms here at home did he think would best adorn their dormitory rooms? And from a pile of photographs, which did he think was the
best image of Maud? Of himself? Of the house? Of Ralph? And: that snapshot of Lillie Ruth and Tessa and Dennis: could he have it copied? On and on. Small decisions of huge heart.
On their last full day at home, he could only stand at the open doors of their rooms, looking in at them as they folded up and packed into their initialed suitcases their clothes and their different collections of “things.” And then the rising of the next morning’s sun. A clear, brilliant Sunday: the day of their departure—Maud to accompany them on the train trip to Philadelphia (“going along,” she had explained to others, “to help them settle into their college rooms”).
In the afternoon, he drove them into Cleveland, walked with them through the vast, crowded terminal (two redcaps following, bearing their luggage), handed them aboard the waiting train, into the plush of a Pullman car drawing room; held Caroline in a tight embrace, then Julia, who, with her kiss, spoke his name, “Morgan,” and let out into his ear a soft sob. “Write,” he told her, trying to smile. Maud next in his arms: “I’ll see you Thursday,” she said to him, her voice uncharacteristically thin from the emotion of this parting’s meaning: this line drawn down the middle of their lives. Then the porter’s urgent voice telling him he must go.
He drove out of the city, attaining at last the quieter country roads, dusk darkening the gold of the September fields, the night’s first mysteries gathering in the wayside woodlands, a part of him weeping; back, alone, to the house he loved, empty now—and hushed; and spilling out from every corner of its many tall rooms a near-decade’s cornucopia of memories: unrepeatable achievements and irreversible mistakes which willingly (or not) he and Maud and Julia and Caroline together had made happen.
He turned on lights, poured a drink, ate a sandwich, lit a fire in the library and sat before it, reimagining his life, the war, the torpedoing and the unnameable luck of his survival, reviewing the multitude of his subsequent blessings. He let Ralph out, late, to pee, and heard the hoot of an owl, and surveyed the sky, checking the stars’ formations, and then, as in a timeless narrative, man and dog went back into the house and side by side, tired, climbed the stairs and went to bed.
Matters of Chance Page 32
