“You’ve never been serious about it?”
“Good Lord, no. I love music, but I want it to be for pleasure, not work. You take everything too seriously, Henry.”
“I know … it’ll be work for you if you have to give lessons.”
“Well, that can’t be helped. Let’s not talk about it. Silver looks well, doesn’t she?”
“Yes.” I swallowed the bait and changed the subject. “I’m glad and relieved about her. I was afraid she was going to be like Mamma.”
“Eddie’s such a sweet little thing,” Ilsa said, “and he’d do anything in the world for her. And then, there’re the children. I think the children have been most important of all.”
“Ilsa—”
“Yes?”
“Why haven’t you had any more children?”
She looked at me quickly, then out over the dark ocean. “Nobody wrote you about it?”
“About what?”
“I wanted more children. I thought they’d help. Things were much better with Monty and me for a time after Brand was born. When she was two I had a miscarriage. I can’t have any more.”
“How did it happen?” I asked. “Would you mind telling me?”
“No. I don’t mind. I told you I seem to talk to you. Well—Monty was going down to Miami on business. I wasn’t feeling too well and he wanted me to come with him and see some doctor he’d heard of down there. He was just as crazy to have the baby as I was. He wanted a boy, of course. We planned to be in Miami about a month—that would have been till about three weeks before the baby was due. I had the trunks all packed. Monty always insists on traveling as though he were going to be gone for years. Then, the night before we were to leave, we had a quarrel. We’d planned to leave Brand with your Cousin Anna, and all of a sudden Monty decided she’d be a bad influence on the child and we’d have to take her with us. It was just a crazy whim. He’d been drinking. I was feeling miserable and hadn’t learned yet how to cope with him when he was in that condition. When he hit me I wasn’t prepared for it and I fell. I thought I was all right—but I guess that was what started it. It was really quite a fall, because I whacked my head against the marble-topped table and went out for a moment. When I came to, Monty had me in his arms and was weeping over me. He carried me upstairs and put me to bed. Sometimes he can be very sweet.”
She spoke quietly, unemotionally. “I started the pains soon after. They tried to save the baby, but it was no use.” She let the fine sand sift through her fingers. “The moon will be up in a minute. It’s getting light at the edge of the ocean. Watch, Henny.”
I looked out across the dark water to the horizon. Slowly, over the black edge of sea, the moon lifted itself, a great burnt-orange disc. It looked not prehistoric, but posthistoric. In its strange sulphurous light the ocean looked unbelievably old as it rolled in slowly, lecherously licking the sand. Close to the water’s edge lay dark patches of tangled seaweed and clumps of water hyacinth that had come in by the river, had curled silkily around the jetties, and been washed ashore. They looked alive now, coiling and writhing like snakes, like the last living thing on earth. I wanted to reach over and take Ilsa’s hand, but she sat there, her eyes absorbing the dark of night, and I knew that I must not break in on her isolation.
As the moon pulled itself dripping out of the ancient sea it became smaller and slowly turned from its appalling bloody color to gold, and finally, leaping triumphantly clear of the water, it swung white and pure up in the sky.
“There’s a kind of fog around the moon tonight,” Ilsa said. “I expect it will rain tomorrow—real rain, not just a thunder shower.”
“Oh,” I said. The moon seemed quite clear to me, but I have never been any good at seeing weather signs. I remembered once when Ilsa had tried to point out some of the constellations to me I had been unutterably stupid.
“I forgot to tell you before,” she said. “Watch out for those clumps of hyacinth. Sometimes a water moccasin will drift in on one from the river.… It’s a lovely night, isn’t it, Henry?” She put her arm in mine, and I thought I would die from an agony of longing at her touch.
We walked back to the others. Brand was still sleeping on the steamer rug, the forlorn empty picnic basket beside her, her young sleep undisturbed by the raucous strains of Waiting for the Robert E. Lee.
29
On sunday I went to church with Papa. Violetta, Dolph and Silver had come from across the river; Eddie was still downstate, Ilsa, Monty, and Brand sat in the pew in front of us. Throughout the sermon there was the constant gentle sound of palm-leaf fans moving slowly back and forth, back and forth, creating a mild warm breeze throughout the church. The light was too warm as the sun pushed it through the stained-glass windows; the reds and yellows and greens of the small pieces of glass seemed alive with heat. I watched Ilsa fanning herself slowly, watched her amused look and Brand’s proud one as Monty walked with elegant dignity up the aisle during the collection, reverently bearing the silver plate. Papa, Violetta, and Silver sang loudly and smugly:
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it:
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O lake and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above!
Randolph cleared his throat and looked down his long nose at his hymnal. Ilsa looked around her with her clear eyes; it seemed to me that she was trying not to laugh at something.
Ignoring Papa’s looks, I left before communion. Ilsa followed me out.
“Henny, walk over to your Cousin Anna’s with me, and then come on back to dinner. I can’t bear Sunday dinner.”
“Well, Papa—” I started.
“You said he didn’t want to see you. Come along.”
“Oh—all right,” I said.
Cousin Anna’s house was not far from the church. We walked slowly, because of the midday sun beating down on our heads. Ilsa wore a coral-colored dress Cousin Anna had given her, and a wide-brimmed, natural-straw hat which her wild hair pushed onto the back of her head. Instead of being beaten down and killed by the merciless strength of the sun she seemed to take life from it, to diminish it by her own capacity for receiving its violent energy.
Cousin Anna was sitting out under the magnolia tree and, as we kissed her and sat down beside her, it felt as though only a few days instead of so many years had passed. I seemed to be back in that summer when I had spent so many evenings sitting silently under this tree with Cousin Anna, the heat and our thoughts weighing equally heavily upon us, while I waited, waited, hoping to see Ilsa’s precise, graceful form come toward us down the path.
She seemed glad to see me, glad, as always, to see Ilsa, but she didn’t want to talk, so after a few minutes we left and walked slowly back to the church. Monty and Brand were waiting in the car when we got there; Monty was hot and impatient.
“Where the hell have you been?” he asked.
“We went over to see Cousin Anna,” Ilsa said.
“Oh, you did.”
“Yes. Henry’s coming back to dinner with us. Hop in, Hen.”
I climbed in the back and Ilsa sat down beside Monty, pulling Brand onto her lap. Monty sat glowering, his hands clenched on the steering wheel. After a while Ilsa said, “If you’re not going to drive, Monty, move over and let me do it. I want time to wash up before dinner.”
Monty started the car roughly. As we careened around a corner on two wheels and almost ran down another car, I didn’t think we had a chance in the world of getting home alive, and discovered abruptly how little I wanted to die. Ilsa sat motionless and unperturbed in the front seat, one arm firmly around Brand. Once, when Monty almost seemed to lose control of the car, she dropped the other arm lightly across his shoulders, and his hand seemed to steady at the wheel.
When we got to the house Ilsa went upstairs to wash. Monty wound up his phonograph, put on a record, then changed his mind, scraping the needle off the disc, and slammed out of the room after her. I went into the hall and phoned to say I wouldn�
��t be home, then pushed through the rice portieres and sat down in the drawing room. After a few minutes Brand came in, her face shiny and new-scrubbed. She stared at me with sudden shy silence, then sat down in a corner with a picture book. I looked around this room which had gained importance, had, indeed, become a new room, since it now belonged to Ilsa, though actually it was little changed.
It was, at any rate, slightly less oppressive than the parlor which was hardly ever used. Two long French windows opened out onto a narrow stone terrace. Around the thin square pillars to this terrace a heavy wisteria vine was twisted, so thick and luxuriant that it formed a green screen that almost cut off the view of the ill-kept lawn going down in a mass of weeds and shaggy shrubbery to the river. Heavy brown-velvet curtains, lined with scarlet Chinese silk, always hung at these windows. In summer, muslin bags were pulled on over them so that they stood out, bulky and white, on either side. Between the windows was a black marble-topped table on which stood a large white marble statuette of Iago whispering in Othello’s ear, which Monty had always admired greatly. And there was a Rogers group of two little boys standing by a horse at a watering trough. When we were very little Uncle Montgomery used to put it on the floor and let us ride the horse. A large picture of the Sibyl with her head in a turban hung over this.
I noticed that the dark brown carpet had been taken up for the summer and in its place were Japanese raffia mats. White linen covers were on all the furniture except the Japanese bamboo chaise longue and the sewing chair, giving the room a put-away, unused look. The walls were still papered with the same horrible brown paper. The only part of the room which seemed to have Ilsa’s touch was the corner where the old square grand piano stood. It was piled with music now, instead of being covered, as in the old days, with a shawl on which had been placed a cut-glass vase holding dried grasses. Across the wall she had had bookshelves built, and the worn, well-read-looking volumes made one feel that perhaps someone alive came occasionally into this room. Above the shelves she had hung a water-color sketch of Aunt Elizabeth, evidently one of Aunt Violetta’s pallid efforts—but even Aunt Violetta couldn’t help letting some of Elizabeth’s vehemence slip into the expression.
I went over to the piano and sat down. I had learned to play a little while I was in Paris; sometimes, when Telcide and I gave a party, I would accompany her while she sang. Now I began to play softly one of Nursie’s old songs that I had taught Telcide, and which I hoped she was still singing successfully with that heavy accent of hers that somehow gave it an added charm. Brand came over and knelt on the piano bench beside me.”
“You don’t play as well as Mamma does,” she said after a while.
I flushed and stopped. She put her hand gently against my cheek. “Please play some more. It’s just different from Mamma. I like to hear you,” she said softly, her face puckered with distress at having hurt my feelings. So I started again, with even more diffidence than before.
Ilsa came running down the stairs and in through the rice portieres. “Hen, wasn’t that the rosy-bush song you were playing?”
“Yes, do you know it?”
“Father used to sing me to sleep with it when I was little. His mother used to sing it to him. It’s the only thing he remembered about her—she died when he was just a little boy and his sister raised him. Play it again, will you?”
I played, and as she sang along with me I was relieved to hear that her voice was like Telcide’s, though Telcide was a singer, and I had to admit that Ilsa wasn’t.
I wish I was
A red red rosy bush
A-blooming by-ee
The banks of the sea,
For when my true
Love would come by-ee
He’d pluck an rose
From offen me.
A rosy rose,
A red red rosy bush,
He’d pluck an rose
From offen me.
Ilsa hugged Brand with excitement. “Ladybird, don’t you remember that? I used to sing it to you when you were a baby.”
Brand nodded. “I remember.”
“Do play it again, Henny,” Ilsa begged.
This time she listened while I played, and watched carefully. “I like your accompaniment,” she said. “Will you teach it to me?”
“Of course. By the way, how did your piano lesson go?”
“Not bad. The child’s a moron and I’ll never be able to teach her anything, but I’ve got to the point now where money is money. Violetta has promised to get me some more pupils. So at last a use in the world is being found for Violetta. Henny, play my darling rosy-bush song again.”
She stood behind the piano bench, one arm around Brand, the other resting lightly on my shoulder. Monty came in. “A very pretty domestic picture,” he said.
“Come and join us.” Ilsa looked around and smiled at him.
He sat down on one of the white-shrouded chairs and pushed his fingers through his glossy hair. “Always been very fond of Ilsa, haven’t you, Henry?” he asked.
“Of course,” I answered, watching him closely. I was sure he had had something to drink while he was upstairs.
“Advise you not to get too fond of her.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ladybird,” Ilsa said to Brand, “will you go out to the kitchen and see if you can’t hurry dinner up? I’m about to swoon with hunger.”
Brand went slowly off. Monty waited until she had disappeared through the rice portieres. “Mean just what I say. Better not get too fond of my wife.”
“Monty, don’t be absurd,” Ilsa said, going over to him. “Of course Henny and I are fond of each other. We’ve known each other most of our lives.”
“Won’t have my wife pleasuring herself with another man.”
Ilsa laughed. “Monty, no one on earth but you would think of calling Henny, ‘another man.’ It makes me feel practically incestuous.”
Monty grunted.
Ilsa laughed again, trying to make him catch her amusement. “Monty, you poor fool, Henny’s like my kid brother. He’s certainly not interfering with your rights as a husband.” Monty was silent, looking with his dulled eyes into her clear ones. “I think you should apologize to Henny for your foolish ill-temper. This isn’t a very hospitable way to behave toward your long-lost cousin.”
“Will not have my wife behave like a loose woman,” he said. “No matter what kind of woman your mother was, when you married me you were supposed to behave like a lady.”
Ilsa became very pale. “How dare you,” she said in a low voice.
“I’ll say anything I like to my wife,” Monty said.
“After the way you’ve behaved since the first week I married you, you’d have no right to say anything if I made you a cuckold with every man in town.” Her voice was still very low very controlled. Standing a few feet away, by the piano, I had to guess at the words. When she had finished speaking there was a short silence like a suspension of time—not seconds passing, empty, with nothing in them, but a sudden complete stillness, time holding its breath, the hands of the clock not moving the heart not beating, the pulse empty in the wrist.
Then Monty struck Ilsa across the face. I sprang toward him, but quick as a flash she had caught him by both wrists. I stopped and stood waiting.
“You will apologize to Henry for your boorish behavior,” she said. She held his flaccid wrists in so firm a grip that he couldn’t struggle. “Apologize,” she said again, through clenched teeth.
“Sorry, damn you,” he said.
She continued to hold his wrists. “And you will behave like a rational human being at the dinner table. Not for my sake, or even for Henry’s, though he is our guest, but for your daughter’s. She still loves you and thinks you are the most wonderful father in the world. For some reason I’d like to have her go on thinking it.”
She let go of his wrists, went over to the bamboo chaise longue, and threw herself down on it. Between her shoulders and under her arms dark wet stains from nerv
ous exertion spread themselves on her bright Shantung dress; she looked white and exhausted. We sat in silence until Brand came in, saying, “Mattie Belle says we can come in to dinner now.” Then Ilsa got up with her usual energy and led the way into the dining room.
30
During the meal she talked constantly, not paying much attention to what she was saying, watching Brand’s face to make sure that nothing that had happened before dinner had reached her.
“I hope you appreciate these butter beans,” she said. “I spent hours yesterday shelling them.”
“Why didn’t you let Mattie Belle shell them?” Monty scowled.
“Mattie Belle has plenty else to do. We wouldn’t have had them if I hadn’t shelled them.”
“They’re very good,” I said.
She laughed. “I worked up such a grudge against them I didn’t dare speak to myself or anyone else for hours. It’s a good thing we had to go to church today. Skinny, flat, tight-shut nuisances. I don’t mind English peas—though they are a little annoying when they get out of hand and begin to roll all over the floor. But butter beans! I can’t think of an epithet to fit ’em. They have to be torn open by brute force and yanked from their hulls. Very hard on fingernails and not so good to eat anyway.”
“Umph,” Monty said, but Brand and I laughed obligingly.
There was a long silence. Mattie Belle passed the rice and gravy and butter beans around again. Monty helped himself and said, “Ilsa, does that man Ira build?”
“Yes. He built most of our house at the beach. Why?”
“Think you could get him to do some building around here?”
“He probably could be persuaded. But what do we need to have built?”
“Thought I’d have some kennels put in at the side of the house and get in some hounds, some pointers. Like to do some hunting with Eddie and Dolph next winter. Could Ira build the kennels?”
“Yes, I’m sure he could build them, Monty, but all you really need is a wire pen.”
“Want kennels. If you’re giving piano lessons we ought to have more money. Think I can get you a few pupils. When can you get hold of Ira?”
Ilsa Page 16
