Nanny Joy didn’t respond too well when I told her about the planned trip. She knew I didn’t like automobiles and that my little “spin in the country” suggestion was unprecedented. When she accused me of breaking my promise that I wouldn’t take Joanne to Childgrave, I had to admit the truth. It was a bad moment. I had weakened Joy’s trust in me, and I knew that life was more difficult without trust. And there was also a chance that Joy was right in thinking that a visit to Childgrave might not be the best thing for the peace of Joanne’s young mind, which was no longer being burdened by the presence of invisible friends. But love and the tranquil mind don’t always go together.
So, the next Saturday, Joanne and I strapped ourselves into a rental car (black) and took to the road. The day was clear and brilliantly sunny as we left Manhattan, and the snow that had fallen during my first trip to Childgrave had melted.
Joanne was showing signs of high excitement as we left. Patches of red appeared, faded, and reappeared on various parts of her face, making her look as if she were experimenting with makeup. She was also unusually silent. Joanne didn’t have the suburbanite child’s casual attitude toward automobiles. She got to huddle in the back of taxicabs once in a while, but the view of the Hudson River and the New Jersey Palisades from the front seat of a car moving over the George Washington Bridge was too much for her to deal with comfortably. She finally put her hands over her eyes and slumped down in the seat.
“I’m five years old now,” she said.
Joanne had had her fifth birthday on the second day of November, and she had expected that life would hold no more secrets or problems for her after that. Whenever things got a bit sticky, she reminded herself that she was no longer four. I understood that impulse, but with me it was reversed. As I dealt with confusing road signs and aggressive drivers I had to remind myself occasionally that I had not yet reached the age of fearful senility.
After we got over the bridge and through the heavy traffic around the city, Joanne and I both relaxed a little. It was time for me to try a little honesty. Joanne was sitting up and taking notice of her surroundings again.
“Do you remember when you told me about Chilegray?” I asked.
Joanne didn’t hesitate. “That’s where Colnee lived.”
“Well, it’s called Childgrave. And we’re going to visit there. We’re going to have lunch with Miss Coleridge’s mother.”
“Will Miss Coleridge be there?”
“I don’t think so.” But although I didn’t expect Sara to be there, I had been doing some hoping that she would be. It was almost Thanksgiving Day, and I had convinced myself that Sara might be coming home to see her mother (if she hadn’t been at home all along). If so, I would indeed be giving some elaborate thanks.
“Mrs. Coleridge would be like my grandmother, wouldn’t she?” Joanne asked.
“That’s right. She’s a nice lady. She wants to meet you.”
Joanne began to sing the old Thanksgiving song: “Over the river and through the woods, to Grandmother’s house we go.” Those were the only words she knew of the song, and they were the only ones I had ever known. We sang them badly and repeatedly as the mountains and the woods began to appear. My enthusiasm for the songfest gave out before Joanne’s did. She began to vary the lyrics of the song:
Over the river and through the woods,
To Colnee’s house we go.
We’ll eat and drink,
And then we’ll think
Of the wild and drifting snow.
The reference to snow made me think of my previous trip to Childgrave, and despite the sunshine and music, I began to feel a little apprehensive. Joanne seemed to sense my change of mood. She stopped singing and quickly fell asleep. The sound of her steady breathing and the drone of the engine began to affect me. The car was too warm, and I felt as though someone were hypnotizing me and saying, “When you wake up, you will feel awful.”
I turned off the car’s heater and opened a window slightly. I told myself I was going to have a good time in Childgrave. I was going to show Joanne what the real America was like: the America that shows up on television commercials, with reasonable, smiling, healthy people sitting on a front porch or around a fireplace, eating or drinking or getting cheerful telephone calls from relatives.
But no one got telephone calls in Childgrave. And even though in general that seemed to me like an admirable state of affairs, I was aware that to most people—or even to me in my more reflective moments—there would seem to be something perverse about that kind of isolation.
I wondered what I would have thought of Childgrave if it had no associations with Sara. Would I have just ignored it? Would it have seemed fascinating in some way? Or would it have frightened me? Probably now—as opposed to the time of my first visit—it would have been attractively mysterious.
But I wasn’t searching for mystery. I was looking for Sara, of course. But what did Sara represent? She could give me the stability that comes with being part of a family; she could be a wife to me and a mother to Joanne. But there was more to it than that. Once again, I got the feeling that Sara had a special kind of knowledge that I wanted to share. It wasn’t exactly that I felt she had something to teach me, but rather that I could add meaning to my life just by supporting her beliefs. According to the road sign at the edge of Childgrave, Sara came from what was—or at least had been at one time—a community of saints. The idea of becoming a saint didn’t appeal to me, but I thought I wouldn’t mind helping someone else become one. I didn’t know a lot about sanctity, but I knew enough to be sure that it was a complicated subject and that saints came in a great variety of shapes and personalities.
I was reminded of one of the more unlikely shapes and personalities when I saw Delbert Rudd’s patrol car suddenly appear in my rearview mirror. I hadn’t realized I was so close to Childgrave. I slowed down and let Rudd pass me. In the sunshine, the patrol car seemed merely grimy, and not menacing as it had in the darkness. The chief stopped at the turnoff that led to the village, and I pulled up behind him. He got out of his car and walked over to see us. Joanne had roused herself, and as I glanced over at her I could see she had decided to make use of her five years of practice in dispensing charm.
Delbert Rudd was obviously at a disadvantage. He had to overcome forty or so years of experience in casting suspicious glances. He said hello to me without much enthusiasm and turned his attention to Joanne. I made introductions, and I was sorry to see that a friendship had apparently begun. After I said to Joanne, “Mr. Rudd is a chief of police,” she and Delbert began to talk across me as if I were an inconvenient lump on the driver’s seat of the car.
Joanne produced her most seductive smile, gazed at the floor of the car, swung her legs shyly, and said to Mr. Rudd: “Do you have a horsie?”
The chief didn’t actually smile, but his eyes did an approximation of a twinkle. “I don’t personally have a horse,” he said. (He obviously didn’t have the courage to say “horsie.”) “But there are some near our village. Would you like to ride one?”
“No. I don’t think so, thank you. But I would like to get a Christmas tree.”
“It might be a little early for that, dear. But if you come back nearer Christmas, I’m sure we can find a nice one for you.”
“I’m five years old now.”
Joanne was using her scattergun technique. I wondered whether Delbert had had enough experience with children to know that the technique was never as aimless as it seemed and that Joanne was—without having to bother with the conventions of grown-up talk—finding out what her new acquaintance had to offer her. And I wondered whether Joanne would find out that the chief had been known to run people out of town and to watch young girls dance in the glare of his black car’s headlights.
“Do you like being five?” the chief asked.
“Yes. I�
�m old enough to do anything I want.”
I would have to have a talk with Joanne when we got home.
Chief Rudd seemed as interested in Joanne’s last statement as I was. “When will you be six?” he asked.
“Not for a long time. And then I’ll be too old to die.”
There was a pause. I was trying to figure out whether there was any hidden logic in Joanne’s ramblings. The chief seemed entranced and moved by what he had heard. Joanne looked smug. “My toads died,” she said. “But they didn’t say their prayers the way I do.”
“What do you say in your prayers?” the chief asked.
“I bless everyone. And now I can bless you.”
Chief Rudd swallowed hard a couple of times, and his vocal cords made a couple of false starts before coming out with “It’s a pleasure to have you in Childgrave, young lady.” Then he turned and walked to his car and drove away. There were no welcoming remarks for me.
Joanne and I sat squinting against the glare of the sun. I noticed, though, that even at noon the village of Childgrave lay in shadow. It was obviously one of those places that the folk song describes as “a holler where the sun don’t ever shine.”
“What was all that about dying?” I asked Joanne. “I didn’t understand that.”
“Mr. Rudd knew.”
“Maybe Mr. Rudd knew, but your daddy doesn’t know.”
I waited for Joanne to tell me what I didn’t know, but she obviously wasn’t going to volunteer anything.
I tried again. “Why do you talk so much about dying lately, sweetie?”
Joanne closed her eyes in a tight squint and began to massage her face in some kind of exasperation. I didn’t let her off the hook that easily. “What does it mean when you say you’ll be too old to die?”
My daughter sighed. “It’s like that in Chilegray. But it’s all right. You’ll see.”
I started the car. I suspected that even if Joanne had tried to explain her thoughts and feelings she wouldn’t have succeeded. As we drove down into the shadows Joanne looked eager and delighted. I would try to take her at her word: it would be all right. But I had my doubts. I thought of the rows of small headstones in the town’s cemetery; I thought of the name “Childgrave”; and—in my most disturbing thought—I wondered why Chief Rudd had not needed any explanation of Joanne’s cryptic remarks about death. As Joanne had said, he understood. I didn’t know whether I was upset by the possibility that my daughter might be in danger or by the fact that she and Delbert might be sharing a secret. I hoped I would be let in on the secret during our visit.
Mrs. Coleridge opened the front door of her house before we were out of the car. She was wearing a long-sleeved plum-colored dress with a floor-length skirt, and a lace-trimmed high collar. If she had been at a cocktail party in Manhattan, her outfit would have looked eccentrically stylish. But standing in the doorway of her old house, she looked like a handsome participant in a historical pageant.
Joanne and Mrs. Coleridge greeted each other as though they were old friends. A couple of large logs were burning in the fireplace of the sitting room. We settled down, and I listened to my daughter and my would-be mother-in-law chat. There were no cryptic remarks—just straightforward, get-acquainted exchanges. I joined in occasionally, but mostly I just observed. Or, actually, I was ignored. No one in Childgrave seemed especially interested in me. But my resentment was offset by the pride I took in Joanne’s ability to carry on an adult conversation with a stranger. Maybe Ms. Abraham was doing something right, after all. But more likely I had Nanny Joy to thank for my daughter’s social graces.
Mrs. Coleridge brought in a tray of homemade bread, apple butter, cashew butter, cider, and pears. The meal reminded me that vegetarianism is not without its appeal. After lunch, I helped Mrs. Coleridge clear away the dishes, and just as we sat down again, there was a tap on the front door.
“I asked some friends to stop by,” Evelyn said. She opened the door, and four people came into the house. Three of them were adults who looked friendly but reserved. The fourth was an unreserved girl of about Joanne’s age, who announced that her name was Gwendolyn Hopkins. She pulled her coat off, kissed Joanne, and took her by the hand. “I’ll show you what it’s like upstairs,” she said, and the two girls disappeared up the staircase.
Two of the adults were Gwendolyn’s parents, Beth and Arthur Hopkins. Beth was tall, plain, and awkward. She had an unmistakably pensive quality, and she didn’t pay much attention to me. I thought at first that she was one of those annoying, self-obsessed people, but I soon realized that she was thinking not about herself but someone else—probably about her daughter. She kept glancing up at the ceiling, as if trying to see into the rooms above us in which Gwendolyn and Joanne could be heard faintly moving about and chattering. But judging from Beth’s expression, if she was thinking about her daughter, the thoughts couldn’t have been either uncomplicated or pleasant.
Arthur, Beth’s husband, was as tall and plain as she was, but the same features that made her not especially attractive seemed quite acceptable in him. He looked better with her than he would have without her, and maybe that might have been the basis of a good marriage in their case, because they seemed devoted to each other.
The other stranger was a Miss Verity Palmer, who was short, buxom, and much sexier than I would have expected anyone named Verity to be. She was giving me her full attention. It seemed as if she were looking for a conquest rather than a friend, and I was both intrigued and embarrassed.
We all sat down and tried to explain ourselves to one another, but I got the feeling that they knew a lot more about me than I did about them.
“Jonathan is a portrait photographer who lives in New York City,” Mrs. Coleridge said. “He is a friend of Sara’s.”
“We’re all quite proud of Sara,” Beth said. “Have you heard her play the harp?”
“Yes. Not as often as I’d like to, but I’ve heard her.” I was reminded that I hadn’t spent as much time as I’d like doing anything with Sara.
Mrs. Coleridge took the role of interlocutor again. “Beth helped teach Sara to play the harp, Jonathan. We have always had highly accomplished harpists in Childgrave.”
Beth’s look of general regret deepened a little, perhaps because a little envy had been stirred up. “No one has been as accomplished as Sara,” she said. “Sara’s a genius.” Beth turned to her husband. “Don’t you agree, Arthur?”
“Probably,” Arthur said.
Beth looked respectfully at cautious Arthur and then said to me, “He’s got the best ear in Childgrave, but, unfortunately, he’s only interested in grapes and muscles.”
“As in cockles and mussels?” I asked.
There were some amused glances, and then Verity Palmer said, “No, as in biceps and sphincters.” The glances lost their amusement. Verity didn’t seem concerned. “Arthur and Beth are medical illustrators. Beth does skeletons, and Arthur does muscles.”
For a moment I forgot I wasn’t in Manhattan. “And together, they lick the plate clean,” I said.
Verity said, “Yes,” and giggled. The others stared blankly at me for a few awkward seconds.
And then Arthur said, “Hybrids.” I wrinkled my brow and tilted my head. “The grapes,” he said. “French hybrid varietals grafted to American root stock.”
“You grow them?” I asked. Arthur nodded. I had to add, “Without sunlight?”
“The other side of the hill. The south slope, near the river. I’m getting close to a decent red wine. Maybe you’d like to sample it.”
I was beginning to like Arthur. Obviously, his terseness and reserve concealed some strong enthusiasms. He was probably the kind of husband who never touched his wife in public but who never stopped touching her in private. I didn’t share his presumed enthusiasm for Beth, but I thought he could probably get m
e to share his interest in grapes without too much trouble. I said, “I’d like to try your wine, but I don’t have much of a palate, I’m afraid. My agent should be here. He knows about wine.”
“So does ours,” Beth said.
“Your what?”
“Our agent.”
“You have an agent?”
“For our illustrations. He’s in Manhattan. He gets us work from publishers.”
So Harry might be right. The time would come when everyone would have an agent. Childgrave was beginning to seem less sinister to me. With the exception of Mrs. Coleridge, with her archaic quality, the people I was talking to seemed like people I could have encountered in the city at any time. Verity Palmer, for example, struck me as being intelligent, self-assured, and energetic. She might have been the chairwoman of a volunteer committee. I tested my theory and asked her how she spent her time.
“I dominate our local historical society,” she said. “And I also conduct tours of the village for curly-haired visiting photographers. As a matter of fact, the next tour starts . . .” (she consulted a watch that was pinned to the front of her strikingly tight sweater) “. . . now.”
Mrs. Coleridge and the Hopkinses looked a little surprised at the announcement. I sat quietly and waited for my hostess to sort things out. Then, from the upper floor of the house—which Gwendolyn Hopkins and Joanne had been exploring with remarkable quietness—came the sound of a harp. I immediately thought of Sara. Was she upstairs? Was this all an elaborate surprise party for me?
But no one shouted “Surprise!” And the harp obviously wasn’t being played as much as toyed with. Eerie, random glissandos echoed through the house.
Childgrave Page 20
