Jason tried to improve his mood by turning to the lighter sections of the paper, the articles Patricia always read. These ranged from Mary Pickford, “America’s Sweetheart,” the songs of Irving Berlin, and the new dances, claimed to be immoral by the “guardians of American virtue,” to the antics of suffragettes and stories of the “injuries to the nation’s morals and health” by the local saloons, and the other “purveyors of the Demon Rum.” There were editorial diatribes against the “laxness of modern parents” and the “growing indifference of youth to decorum, sobriety, religion, and authority.” There were also editorials concerning the “Yellow Peril.” One got the impression that the Oriental people were about to inundate the white population of America, and there were sinister queries as to the reason.
Jason also noted that more and more girls and women, even married women with children, were entering the factories and were wretchedly paid. “A new freedom for women!” some newspapers exulted. It was progress. The same story also made light of the increase in racial tension. It seemed to Jason that the Negro was either affectionately derided in popular songs or genially lynched in the South. He remembered hearing a song recently that went:
When you ain’t got no money,
well you needn’t come round,
Ef you is broke, Mister Nigger,
I’ll throw you down.
The tune had originated in 1898, and was revived with enthusiasm.
Disgusted, Jason was about to throw down the paper when his eye fell on an excerpt from a speech by Roosevelt. “We stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord!”
That sentence seemed even more portentous than anything else in the news, and the glowing August sunset suddenly seemed bleak and cold. Did Mr. Roosevelt anticipate something the rest of the country did not? What Armageddon, what battle?
Jason stood up, filled with unease.
At least one evening a week now he came home to have dinner with Patricia. His conscience induced him to do this. Had he not done his wife a terrible wrong in marrying her? He had thought he loved her. He forgot that she had implored him to marry her, and so he was full of pity for her now. Still, the marriage had given him Sebastian, and the twins, so something good had come of it. He would try even harder to mitigate his guilt for making her his wife. In the meantime, he was resolutely trying now to avoid thinking of Molly, for when he did so he would feel a profound wave of despair, and despair was not a familiar emotion. “We Irish may weep, but we never despair,” Bernard had often said.
Jason went into the dining room, where the servants were laying the dinner dishes and silver. He poured a large measure of whiskey for himself and drank it, standing up near the cabinet. It seared his throat and stomach, but it comforted him. He thought of Patricia. At least, he reflected, the episodes of her drunkenness were over. As he had rarely encountered drunken women before—and they all, when he had seen them at Mrs. Lindon’s, had appeared jolly, noisy, and profane—he did not recognize Patricia’s chronic torpidity and long sullen silences as drunkenness. Moreover, she did not go out regularly anymore for endless lunches, and when she and Jason visited friends, she drank only one glass of sherry and one glass of wine at dinner. He did not understand that her chronic exhaustion was a sign of both intoxication and suicidal depression. If she was surly and silent in his presence and had a new habit of fixing her eyes unblinkingly on some spot in the distance, he felt that she was rightfully reproaching him for his lack of devotion. So he tried to be kinder than ever. She did not seem to notice. Or she would make an impatient gesture of repudiation, as if engrossed with her own thoughts.
Dinner would not be ready for at least half an hour, and Jason went up to the nursery, where his children were having their supper. Nicholas was the first to see him; the child overturned his glass of milk, pushed his plate onto the floor with a crash, and jumped at his father, his small face contorting in the evening light. “Papa, Papa, Papa!” he screamed. “What … what … Peaches, ice cream! Come, come!” He threw himself into Jason’s arms and kissed him, but his hot and protuberant eyes were unseeing. He writhed in Jason’s grasp, and renewed his shouting. When Jason tried to put him down, he clung to his father’s neck and slobbered against it. A low animal-like burbling came from his pulsing throat, a new manifestation. Jason held him tighter and said, “Now, now, Nick.” He did not know why he added, “It’s all right, son, it’s all right.” Though it was not too warm in the nursery, the child was sweating. He clutched Jason and seemed to struggle, but any movement to set him down made him frenzied, and excited that strange cry. Then Jason felt a liquid warmth through the Buster Brown bloomers, and the stench of urine rose in the pleasant air.
Concerned, Jason looked down to find Nicole standing before him. The little girl’s round face was unusually grave. She said very quietly, “Nick, get down and come with me. Nick!” She put her small hand on his leg and tugged at him, and instantly he was quiet. He slid down from Jason’s arms and went away with his sister.
“Dear me,” said Miss Flowers, embarrassed. “The child does get so excited, Mr. Garrity.” She added, “Excuse me, please sir,” and followed the two children, saying, “Tsk, tsk.”
“Well,” said Jason, to Sebastian, who had gotten down from his chair politely and was waiting in his usual grave silence. Jason wiped his hands on his handkerchief, looked at it helplessly. Sebastian came and took it away from him. He said in his gentle manly voice, “I think Nick is sick, Papa.”
“Has he a cold … or something?”
“I don’t think so, Papa. I think something’s wrong with Nick.”
Jason was instantly alarmed. He said, trying for lightness, “Now, what could be wrong? He’s very excitable, but he’s only a little boy, after all. And little boys do have accidents, you know, Sober Face.”
Sebastian disposed of the wet handkerchief. He went to the table and poured a glass of lemonade for Jason, and drew out a chair for him. Then he looked at Jason and said, “Nick is out of control. I think he should see a doctor.”
“Do you, then,” said Jason, almost like his grandfather, and with an effort at indulgence. “If he were sick, Miss Flowers would have told me. He looks very healthy; he’s just too active for a sultry day.”
Jason tousled Sebastian’s hair. The boy absently smoothed it back. He was thinking. Then he said, “Papa, I don’t care what anyone says. Nick needs a doctor. He doesn’t say one word, anymore, that’s sensible. And he wets the bed every night, and cries in his sleep. I hear him, right across the room. And I dry him off and change him, and he jumps and jumps. Papa. Please.”
“You’re an old man, Bastie,” said Jason, but he was more alarmed. “What does Mama say? Have you told her?”
Sebastian looked him straight in the face, and once again Jason thought he was confronted by a man and not a child. His agate eyes, so like Patricia’s, were all at once suffused by an intense yellow light. “I’ve told Mama,” he said in a low voice, and looked quickly away. “So has Nickie. So has Miss Flowers.”
“And?”
The boy was visibly hesitating. “I don’t think Mama is well, either, Papa. She … she didn’t listen … much. She …” Sebastian did not add that Patricia had shouted at him and had slapped his face and had called him a fool, and that she had upbraided Miss Flowers for being too strict with “little Nicholas,” and had scolded Nicole for not “caring” for her brother and taking him to the toilet in time.
“A mother always knows if there is something wrong with her child, Sebastian.”
Sebastian looked away for a moment, and said nothing. Jason drank some lemonade and watched the boy. Patrick had said only recently, “The little spalpeen, God bless him, is too quiet. Too many wimin about him. Needs his da more. Take him hunting in the autumn, with us.”
The huge red August sun, setting to the west, glowed outside the nursery windows. The scent of newly mown grass entered the room. As if to reassure himself, Jason said again, “Your mother would know if some
thing ailed Nick, dear. That she would. She is a very good mother and loves you all.”
Sebastian did not speak. He merely watched Jason with a mature pity.
“I’ll talk to her about a doctor,” said Jason. “Hope that will make you feel better, Bastie.”
“Thank you,” said Sebastian. He went to the table again, fetched the pitcher, and refilled Jason’s glass. Jason regarded him with love. The boy was entirely too old for his years. Something must be done. Patrick was right. Miss Flowers and Nicole came back into the room, Miss Flowers annoyed, Nicole thoughtful.
“Where is Nick?” asked Jason.
“I put him to bed, the naughty boy,” said Miss Flowers crossly. “Dear me, at his age! He is almost four.”
“He can’t help it,” said Nicole. “He didn’t eat half his dinner, either. Sometimes he throws up.”
“A delicate digestion,” said Miss Flowers, glowering at the girl. “Like his dear mama. I’ve heard her complain of it.”
Nicole stared at her with scorn. “He gets upset at nothing. And he runs and runs all the time, and cries too much.”
“Dear me,” said Miss Flowers, “he’s only a baby.”
“I’m almost four, too, and I’m not a baby,” said Nicole. She turned to Jason, innocently absurd in her flounced dress and ruffled pinafore. “Papa, take Nick to a doctor.”
“You and Sebastian,” said Jason. “Is Nick asleep?”
“He screams one minute,” said Sebastian, “and the next minute he is asleep and you can’t wake him.”
“So energetic,” said Miss Flowers, fuming at them. “So unlike …” She glanced at Sebastian with no liking at all.
Nicole slipped her hand into Sebastian’s and held it tightly. The light in the room reddened, and Jason all at once felt afraid. He said to Miss Flowers, “Take Nick to Dr. Conners tomorrow.”
“Dr. Conners wouldn’t know,” said Nicole. “He only knows colds and bellyaches.”
Jason smiled. “Dr. Garrity, what do you think is wrong with Nick?”
Nicole did not respond to this attempt at lightness or to Jason’s smile. “I don’t know, Papa. But it’s something. Not a bellyache, not a cold. It’s something.”
“Just a surplus of energy,” said Miss Flowers with a spot of crimson on her cheeks. “Dear me, Nicole, you talk like an old lady.”
“I am an old lady,” said Nicole with emphasis.
“You do seem so, dear,” said the governess. She almost winked at Jason. Nicole ignored her and waited for Jason to speak. Miss Flowers simpered at Jason this time. “So precocious, this dear child, Mr. Garrity.”
Jason’s alarm was growing. “Miss Flowers or your mother will take him tomorrow to Dr. Conners. Let him examine Nick first of all.”
“A healthy, normal little boy!” cried Miss Flowers, giving Sebastian a look of affront. “Sebastian, you do try to cause trouble all the time, don’t you? It is very bad of you, indeed, and no wonder your poor mother suffers! You are always agitating poor little Nicole, too, over nothing.”
“He does not!” said Nicole in an unusually loud voice. “We both love Nick, and we know there’s something wrong with him.”
Both Nicole and Sebastian were silent then, studying Jason with ponderous attention. He stood up, touching one child and then the other on the cheek. “Tomorrow. I promise,” he said. Then he bent and kissed them. They smiled at him gravely, and Jason got the impression that he was the most naive person in the room, and it amused him for a moment. Then he went downstairs to dine with Patricia.
When Jason entered the room, Patricia was already at the table, one hand aimlessly toying with a fork. The air in the large gloomy room was stuffy, pervaded by the odors of yesterday’s roast pork and fried potatoes.
“Good evening, Patricia,” he said as he sat down. Her unseeing eyes touched him a moment, then resumed their staring; she did not answer him. She was no more aware of him than if he had been a fly on the ceiling. He looked at his wife more closely than usual. When had she become so thin, so emaciated? Her customary appetite had failed of late; she would merely push her food absently about the plate, drink a glass of wine, break a piece of bread she would not eat, and nibble at dessert. Her lassitude in these last weeks had become extremely noticeable, and when questioned, she would reply that it was only the heat. Her long and usually colorless face had taken on a constant flush; in the mornings her face was puffy and her eyes ringed with deep circles. But in some way she contrived to keep her meticulous grooming, though in the past weeks her clothing had seemed to hang on her.
Then there were times when she appeared very vivacious, laughing, talking loudly and with a feverish rapidity, and even singing abruptly on the most untimely occasions, especially when visiting Joan and Lionel.
Jason was often perplexed and disturbed by these unaccountable and sudden changes of mood, but he did not know the reason. Patrick, anxiously fond, would wonder, but if he questioned his daughter, she would laugh and throw her arms about his neck, then dance away. This reassured Patrick; it did not reassure Jason. About Patricia now lingered a sweet scent that neither man suspected was a new disguise for a breath saturated with alcohol. It was not Sen-Sen, nor cloves, and so they had no suspicion. Once Patrick said, “Nick resembles his mother more every day, the boyo! Lively as crickets, both of them.” Jason was no longer reassured by such a remark. A week ago he had asked Patrick to force Patricia to see Dr. Conners, for he knew his own suggestion would be ignored or treated with contempt. The old physician had his own shrewd conjectures, but no absolute evidence. As he was old-fashioned, he could not bring himself to believe that a lady like Patricia Mulligan would “indulge” to the point of blind intoxication, and Patricia was careful. Besides, she preferred to drink alone now, especially before she went to bed, when she was safe from detection.
But alcohol was not the only cause of her lassitude. The reason for her chronic intoxication was fixed in her despair, which grew steadily and was alleviated only in the presence of Lionel. Then she became unnaturally animated, her hands plucking at her handkerchief, her eyes too bright and ardent, her gestures too lavish. Her flush would become brighter, her lips feverish. Only Joan knew and smiled to herself and was amused. Lionel had a growing suspicion and was careful to seat himself at a distance from Patricia; she would then direct all her conversation, sometimes stammering and disordered, at him, and she would gaze at him knowingly and with a terrible hunger.
“The fresh raspberries with cream are very good,” Jason said now after a long oppressive silence at the table. He noticed that Patricia had scarcely touched her food, and his anxiety grew.
She started, looked at him as if jolted. “Are they?” she said listlessly, and then surveyed the berries with a faint frown. She picked up her spoon, took two berries on it, and put them into her mouth. Then she stared dumbly at her plate. Her eyes were dry and dull.
“You should eat more,” said Jason.
Patricia shrugged, without lifting her eyes. “The heat,” she said. She drank a fourth glass of water, then seemed to study the cut design on the glass.
Jason said, “I have to go to New York next week. Would you like to come along?”
Only two months ago she had aroused herself to assent with eagerness when Jason had suggested this. Now she said in an indistinct voice, “No.”
“Why not?” Jason leaned toward her over the cluttered table. “You always liked New York.”
“No,” she said again. With an obvious effort she focused her gaze on Jason. “Too hot.”
“The fall styles will be in, Patricia. You were always interested in them.”
She shrugged and did not answer. Now his alarm quickened. “Are you taking the tonic the doctor gave you?”
“Yes.”
“Lively as a cricket,” Patrick had said with paternal love. But it was a sporadic liveliness, and even this had diminished lately. Jason saw that Patricia now had practically no breast at all, that the slender waist had become a mere
stem, that her flushed skin was dry and faintly tremulous.
“I think you should see a better doctor, such as young Tim Hedges,” said Jason.
Alarm flickered in her eyes. She said in a raised voice, “No! There’s nothing wrong with Dr. Conners! He’s taken care of me all my life!” There was a hint of fear in her vehemence.
“But Dr. Hedges has had a more modern education in medicine.”
“No!” She began to get to her feet.
Then Jason remembered Nicholas. “Just a minute, dear. I must talk to you. It’s about Nick.”
Patricia slowly subsided into her chair. “What about Nick, for heaven’s sake?”
“Well, dear, he does seem too strenuous, let us say, for his age. Too … active, and he’s too thin, too. It’s hard to get his attention—”
“He’s not a secret sneak like your dear Sebastian! He’s a real little boy! He doesn’t creep around listening. He’s not crafty, sneaky, like—”
“Patricia. You know that isn’t true about Sebastian.”
She threw up her hands, and Jason caught a whiff of that sweetish odor as she uttered a short laugh. “Oh, everyone knows he is your pet, and the twins might not exist, for all you care!”
“That’s not true. How can you say that?”
Her eyes were wide and glittering, and all at once Jason thought: She hates the child! My God, she hates the child! Why?
Now Patricia was dangerously excited. Her hands became tight fists on the table, and she leaned toward Jason, her teeth bared is anger. “The way he’s always looking at you. Looking at me. Trying to catch us in something! And stupid! I’ve never known a child to be that stupid. Even Miss Flowers says he is, to me, his mother! I wish … I wish … I wish he’d never been born!”
Answer as a Man Page 41
