Afterwards peace, without fire. Honor is not involved. The mouth, like the anus or the nose, can be wiped with grass. Ah grass, kind polygraph, writing voluminous.
Standing above her, he’s shrunken. He’s bending to her; they bend too. Pearled with her sweat. Touching her sleepy hair.
Going, he says. Driving back.
“Naked?” Her mouth. Strange to speak with it.
No, all’s quiet over there. Past three o’clock. He’ll pick up his clothes, and drive back. Is she all right? Will she be? Can he leave?
He is all travel-sounds.
There’s satisfaction. In being the one left.
Yes, leave me here. On home ground.
In that nest of whispers, maybe. “Naked?” was all she said.
In her state of sexual grace, she lies comfortable. Savoring the nakedness for a spell.
Going down; that’s the name of it. Into the hairy glade.
Where, belly up, the enemy lies, mothering.
Now lie here, waiting to be discovered. In the name of all those who must drive home clothed.
Lying there, she drowns in her own life, upward. Discovers it.
So the body on the riverbank slips its moorings—Cargo coming in!—and heads for its past. Nobody knows how long these interior journeys really take. Under the eternal starlight of the self-fixed eye.
Meanwhile outside, other facts will be authenticating. Some still buried deep in that travel-log of tickets to nowhere, excursions unwilled and letters unmailed but finally received—which all families keep without knowing it: Others already scattering broadside among the village coroners.
Who’s to record them, who’s to pay for them? Haunted messages flying like terns over the body of this narcissist. Attaching silently as banners, to guide her barge. Out toward those shoals where the catering is never over. Where the smashing never stops.
For shortly before, Arthur the butler, glass in hand, has come out to the Kellihy gate. The goblet holds Bajan rum—sugar-cane rum of a double strength you usually get only in his native islands, plus a sweetening called Falernum, and the proper dab of lemon-sugar rubbed against the peel, and ice. Last drink of the day, and his only one; the rest of the time he secretly drinks fizzy water, and carries on the responsibilities of the house.
He’s still in a state of beatitude caused by the pageantry of the party and how well he looked there, which at his age is all the extra he asks of physical life. The loveliest time of a party—especially at Master Bob’s—is when it’s satisfactorily over, and you can watch yourself memorably backwards in its mirroring eye. He’s still wearing the orange loincloth which exactly complements his nutmeg skin; his platinum dye-job is the best he’s ever had; at sixty-nine and a half, he remains a caution to stare at—as even Violet, who has a tongue like an adder, admits—and most important, he’s not yet ugly to himself.
What he likes, all he wants is to have his comforts artistically arranged, down days which promise some sort of freakiness, in a hightone way—and can do it steadily. For much of his life the Kellihys have given him that wish, and he reveres them for it. Nightclub work—which he’d tried for a short, fearful term after finishing rearing his surrogate family—isn’t in it for kicks; plus the hours are wrong—and he’s a domestic man. Up here, when the country palls, he can take himself into the city for a marvelously tripartite day. First selling his silverware in the Village, with enough gay overtones to keep his hand in on that gossip, he then visits old friends in Harlem, some on Sugar Hill, some not so well-placed, and some in hospital—where his silver-money makes him a generous giftgiver. By the time the Harlem horrors had about got to him—and the envy—he’d be safely having tea with Mr. Bob’s mother, on Park. “You’re my real crony, Arthur.” Though by nightfall she’ll be drunk enough to have to be helped to bed, they’re both pleased he no longer has the job of doing it. By day, she keeps herself up as well as anybody in Town & Country, where her picture appears often, in the crisp clothes and hairdos which enchant them both. For him, the tea is always tea. “What you wear to that sodality thing, Miss Lorna—your blue? Just right. And that new man has got the real tone of your hair.” She’d never blued it—too snappy a dish for that, thank God.
“Mr. Bob seeing to your rum, and what’s that other stuff?” she answers. For thirty-five years she’s seen to Arthur’s tipple, and can never recall its name. Certain of his other comforts over the years she properly ignored. But has always remembered the sacred anniversary of his mother’s death as well as he does, though the two had never met. And always has a mass said, at St. Pat’s. What she won’t do is put money in his pocket—or on his future. “Burns a hole there, Arthur Manderville—how’s that nephew of yours, by the way?” Back at the University of the West Indies again, and not so hearty, as she knows well. And is always glad to hear. “Money sent, Miss Lorna—it’s no good to them. He’s as bad as Mr. Bob.”
They confab over it. Yes, he’d see to the new baby’s christening—neither wanted Sister to put her nose in—and he since had. Though naming the baby for him outraged him even more than it did Miss Lorna; over the wire, she’d had to calm him down. “After all, you are Church of Rome.” And yes, he’d smootched Miss Bets’ way with the priests here, who really want none of her. Both he and the old lady—who is two months younger than he—trust no woman except herself. But no, she wouldn’t yet “arrange” for the Catholic home in which he hopes to spend a classy old age—which meant pay for it. “No sirree. You’re not ugly enough yet. I can still look at you. And I’ve been thinking, Arthur—maybe you should start depending on Mr. Bob for that. It would be good for him.” And good for you too, Arthur. Steadying. “Right, Miss Lorna. If I could ever get to him when his pockets are full.” Next time she sent Bob money, she said, she’d let Arthur know well ahead. She’d promised it. “Then you can get your innings in, Arthur. Before Bets.”
A wicked woman, on money matters. And when she sticks to tea. His only chance with her is if she falls ugly, as they both call it, before he does. “Then I’ll want you to see to me.” In which case she has it all set for him to come along early, to the same home she’s going to. “It’s all at my lawyer’s, Arthur. A co-ed home too, don’t you fear. Priests we can get. Company’s what we’ll crave.” And when he pays his hospital visits—as friend after friend fell ugly from all the diseases which could take pieces out of you or hang gadgets on you—he has to agree with her. “So that’s settled. Now tell me, Arthur, is it true that a colored man is head of the government of Barbados?” Just reminding him—in case he has any private thoughts of going back there instead. “Yes, the Governor, Arthur. I’m sure that’s what Monsignor said.” She knows he cannot approve of it. “And you can bet that British daddy of yours Arthur, I don’t either.” She’s the best company, not barring Violet. He and she have the same tone.
Which tells him he isn’t really to credit her on that lawyer. So he’ll have to depend on Bob. He has a plan for it.
“Tone, tone—” Arthur says aloud. Like to have that moon, on a silver salver. Take my picture carrying it.
Tomorrow’s going to be the kind of day he and Violet, long-term fellow Kellihy-addict and straw-boss, will spend happily. Plenty leftover booze for her, enough cozy little tasks-in-solitary for him. Straightening up the spare-room allotted him for his silver-work—where Miss Bets also sometimes struggles with a gentleman on the couch, but according to Violet never quite gives in to them. Or tidying up, from every bush and vine within yards of the pool, pleasant reminders of the party, and of how he’d looked there. He’s already made the baby’s formula, enough for two days; what Miss Betsy will do with her own milk is for her to say—he’s weaned her babies before. A batch of his work-tools is already sloshing toward a fine clean-up in the huge dishwasher the caterers have left, not even saying they’ll be back for it. Crocked worse than the guests, they’d ended up leaving the high-slide as well—and the boy. Violet already has her old phonograph crackling—she won’t have radi
o—and is this minute frying up crab she’d made little Roddy seine for all day yesterday, saying to the poor kid “You drown, I’ll kill you. And set fire to you first, with your own matches. Lay off those from now on, by the way. One garage a year is all we can handle. Try the school.”
Violet is the only real anarchist he knows; in her daily life she hews to it. Women ought to be expert liars, cheats, thieves, she says—whatever they could get away with. “And Miss Betsy could be as good as me at all of it. But she won’t only swap.” After breakfast, he’d get Roddy and Dodo off to the day-camp, which was so important an activity to all adults in the house that he and Violet often chipped in to pay the bill for it. After that a nap, then some poker maybe, he and she playing for baby Arthur’s Greek coins from his Uncle Sean, divvied between them, or Violet’s subway slugs, that big Arthur always made for her. And when those ran out—maybe for the caterer’s boy.
Lose or win, after that he’d dry out his tools and get to work on Mr. Bob’s telephones, on which he and Miss Lorna have an arrangement. She can’t head off all the brokerage-houses; Bob always finds one where the Kellihy credit—even when it’s his—is unfortunately enough. Telephones are even harder. It takes finesse to know when his smart Bob is just drunk enough to ignore a tape-recorder going. Or else so far gone that you can cut off altogether the wire he’s talking on. Especially when the boy himself is wise to the deal, and for Arthur’s sake sometimes even cooperates. “Whyn’t you let the boy run, Miss Lorna? And pick up the tab later?” But she’d rather give Bob the money on an apronstring. Can’t stand to see him play with it. “Now if you want a free hand with your investments, Mr. Bob,” is what he’ll say. “We could come to an arrangement.” And Bob would gleefully cooperate. “For your sake, Arthur. For your sake.” When the market-mess that Bob will make is brought to her attention, he, Arthur will say “I couldn’t help it, Miss Lorna. I feel ugly, before my time.”
But no hurry. After this party, no money will roll in for a long while.
At this point in his ceremonial drink, the mother of the idiot-boy opposite comes out of their porch pushing him before her, settles him with his lap-toys, spreads her arms in a slavey gesture to the air, and goes in again. By then the early silence is already nibbled by the tiny drumming of the cars coming cross-river from the Thruway, a mile north.
In it, he stands on the edge of the rainforest, on the moss-terrace where Crooty, his first white lover, raised tree-orchids, which he called his “ladies,” sending far abroad for their tender, mad illuminations. While wild plateaus of rain sweep the garden, he and Arthur watch from behind the knobbled Georgian urn in the drawing-room, and sip Darjeeling with rum in it.
Finished with his drink—his dream-chaser, as Violet calls it—Arthur always walks briskly back inside to his family, to what they still call his butlering. This morning, holding off, he’ll stand and hark.
Back home in the Islands is a grave he’s been paying for.
Somebody’s walking on it.
No, the grave itself is walking.
It walks up-island, on the Atlantic side, in the jagged, creaming water where nobody swims, and up past the old white inn of his first job, where the British came to eat the breadfruit pie. It walks the ocean all the way here, stiff as a waterspout.
Hoo. I know what you come to tell me. Arthur, don’t you let yourself fall ugly up here.
Git, I tell you. You not my grave any more.
It’s gone.
The inch of chaser in his goblet is teetering like an ocean. He swallows it.
Over the road, some yards south, a tall shape parts the low scrub that hides the doctor’s old dock. A man. Balls naked. Not the doctor for sure. Who’s away anyway. Maybe the older boy. Who won’t set foot over here, but met in the village always greets him most politely. A chilly white couple, that boy’s parents, cold white fish of the suburbs, like a lot of them along here. And with scarcely a sign of any kinfolk. Zombies, that mate themselves up out of the marshes. But he likes the boy.
“Hoo,” Arthur says aloud, arching a wrist.
Not the boy. Moon’s sinking, but he can see a pair of those tiger-shorts. Big blond buck, only one Bob could get to wear them. Piss-drunk by the stare of him. Oughtn’t to drive. But he ambles to the lone car left parked under their embankment, drags out a shirt from it but slambangs into the front seat still bare. Off he goes.
Hoo.
Telephone ringing, ringing, inside the house. Where’s that sot, Violet?
But thank the Lord for modern sound.
Time to take the dye-job in anyway, Arthur. Sun won’t be good for it.
Stately as all get-out, bowing to the mirror inside the band still on his wrist, he obeys.
The boy on the porch opposite, who is a man of thirty-three, says nothing.
The Kellihys are meanwhile having an affair.
Five miles inland from the river, the old coachroad to Tappan divides formally around the scabbed and poulticed bole of a tree left over from Revolutionary days—and then flows on again. The village fathers want to cut the tree, but the state won’t let them. Or perhaps it’s the other way round. The caretaker of the De Windt house, a shabby landmark which sits well back in the unshaven meadow left of the tree, can never remember which of the two pays him. He sleeps where George Washington once did, and that’s enough for him. Or would be, except for the nights when an old MG two-seater, kept for honeymoon sentiment, cracks by him on its way to the Seventy-Six House inn only a mile away, but doing eighty, every time. Yes, he knows the car. Knows them. The Seventy-Six has long since closed for the night, but for those two, his friend Walter—the waiter who sleeps there—will always open up again.
Betsy is singing “There is a street called Pearl,” in the fullthroated tenor which friends will know took her only when she was high. Bob is driving straight for the commodity markets of the world.
He dangles there bloody-mouthed, with a shaft through a chest that was always delicate. Bets’ handbag—containing the pics of five children, the address of a doctor on East Seventy-third Street, four unpaid parking tickets, a calendar-diary with redprinted exhortations, and the Lord’s Prayer written on a purse-sized atomizer—is thrown clean. Her eyes are wide, but no more affrightened in the next world than they were in this one. She is dented forever, but clean. The robins will stop their singing but after a moment begin again. The air has that classic cool of before dawn, any summer morning. How they have connected, the Kellihys, in the end!
Light as a second crop of summer grass, their legend will be. The best man at their wedding—Sean, the philosophy brother—who will come first to identify them, will remember forever how the bride’s dress, overflowing the MG like a sundae its saucer, had had to be tucked back in, and how wittily he did so. “Vanilla Coupe!”
The Doctor’s Prescription
MEANWHILE A MAN IS walking home from Spain. Up the dark River Road, to the future of his house. He’s thinking of home—a church he no longer believes in—and of how to desanctify it. Where a church is groined of flesh, and gemmed at odd altars, with children’s eyes—that’s not easy. There must be a ritual. None he knows of doesn’t scatter dung.
A car soughs by from side to side of the road. Doesn’t kill him. Though the driver, jerking a shirt on, has both hands off the wheel. Nothing will kill him; he walks like the hardy skeleton of himself, feels it. Slightly nervous, though, in this blotchy close landscape with its tame quicksilver river, after the burnt-in encaustic of alp and high rivulet he’s had from his balcony, and from the window above his bed before that, all of it a black-and-tan anodyne for a doctor changed into a patient. With the night wind scratching its single bow on sand, and a gray smell of mountain lichen. He’d grown to like best the days of imaginary sun. When off in the distance or ozone, a hole in the shape of a speculum tapped an orifice in the sky. Imaginary Spain tapped him. Between the stern alluvial plains offered his eye, and the alto lisping of the nursing sisters, he began to think of it as a land o
f public prayer.
It surprised him that the accidie common to his disease hadn’t affected him. Otherwise, a clinical case, stringently clear—as proper to one diagnosed by the patient himself. Collapsing in a circle of colleagues all merrily lifting the white drinks that meant gin-at-last and the end of their tour, he had heard their bow-tie voices stop. From his plague-ship already lifting anchor he’d called out from his faint, up to that rim of wellwishers already halfway to the American shore. “Hepatitis. You’ll see.” By James’s later report, none of them had got it. Only him, the least adventurous. Who, once released from the round of museums and Plazas, and drinking only bottled water, had played cards the whole time, even on the excursion-bus, whose mountain-driver’s technique had been fully described to Charles, in a last letter from health. The trip had been routed them by way of return, or else he’d never have found himself in any country’s provinces. Once, playing twohanded with his seatmate Dr. Bill Caldwell, lifting his eyes from a no-trump bid as the bus lurched over the land-rim, he’d seen into an abyss three thousand feet down. And once, a passenger chicken squawking free from the rear in a moult of dirty feathers, had defecated on him. But more likely the germ had been in the greasy deck of cards, already opened, that Caldwell had got from the roomclerk in Barcelona. Paid for, of course. Had he brought his own backgammon set, he mightn’t have been walking here, four months too late for this American vegetation of shadows. Effete, dainty almost, after Avila. None of it standing clear. But he’d known there’d be two or three sets in the crowd, and so there had been, he’d played all the way over, in the jet. On the bus, all three sets had been bespoke. So it must have been the cards—which, clever as it was of him to note even in illness, he hadn’t mentioned to Lexie, as one of the household details a husband might. In Montevideo—that fight they’d had about her slumming—she’d cried out “You always travel light. At other people’s expense.”
On Keeping Women Page 18
