by Isla Morley
Rhiaan meets us at the baggage claim looking tired because he had to drive the sixty miles of slippery blacktop to get to Reno’s airport and then had to mark time for another hour for the conditions to clear enough for our plane to land.
“Hello, sis,” he says, hugging me hard, his jowls giving way to dimples. “Hope you’re ready for snow.” I put on the pink down-filled parka Cecily has sent along with him; my denim jacket, the warmest thing in my closet, is no match for the brittle air.
“How did an ugly bastard like you wind up with my beautiful sister?” he asks, patting Greg hard on the shoulder. It is an old joke: Rhiaan openly envious of Greg’s height and easy good looks, far from an ugly bastard.
“The weather report said high twenties today,” Greg chats, warming his hands at the blast of hot air from the car’s heater.
“Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey,” Rhiaan replies.
“Not to mention mine,” adds Greg, snickering like a twelve-year-old.
“How’s the writing?” Greg asks. “Magazine publishers as fickle as book publishers?”
“Oh ja,” Rhiaan confirms, “and as tightfisted.” He mentions, without enthusiasm, that an anthology of his old poems is coming out in the summer, but even the publisher is less than optimistic, committing to a small print run. The lectures, he explains, are the bread and butter.
From the backseat, I tune out Greg’s chatter and watch the winter I have been waiting for drift by the car window. Stripped of color, the world finally feels a little more habitable. The clouds are heavy with gloom, casting their gray pallor on the snow-covered mountains, the meadows like gaps in a row of decaying teeth. There are no traces of summer, no promise of spring—just skeletal trees and their sepulchral shrouds, stark and comforting.
When the car slows I awake just in time to see that “bread and butter” is yet another renovation to their stylish bungalow and a second Lexus parked out front. Cicely opens the front door before Rhiaan has turned off the ignition, and waves. She looks thinner, but this is often my first thought when I see her after a long absence. Only on one occasion did Cicely speak of her high school bout of bulimia, admitting that even as she approaches fifty she still occasionally succumbs to her habit of old.
“I’m so sorry I didn’t make it to the funeral, Abbe,” she apologizes as we embrace, and I muffle a reply in her fragrant hair. “We should just give up going to France for vacations. Each time we go something dreadful happens.” Last year, if memory serves, their cat ran away. She grabs my hand and pulls me in. “Come, I’ve got something for you.”
Their home smells of cedarwood and roasting meat, and the familiar sounds of kweto music come from the stereo. The house is streaming with upper-class debris, and we have to step over a mound of East Coast newspapers to enter the living room, where the fireplace blazes beneath Cicely’s perfectly decorated mantel. Out their picture window is a sprawling view of the lake and the steep mountains sliding into it on all sides. The lake looks bad-tempered today, dark, its surface bothered by the gusty north winds.
“Where are the twins?” I ask.
“Claude is spending the weekend with a friend, and Francine is only back from her class trip on Tuesday.”
Leaning against the chaise lounge is a package. “It’s for you, Abbe. I hope you like it.”
I pull the paper off and beneath, framed in koa, is a watercolor in summer hues of Cleo and me.
Cicely has painted us from a photograph taken at the Fourth of July beach barbecue. Worn out from the sun, Cleo had insisted I pick her up. Cicely has captured the faint glow of sunburn on the slopes of Cleo’s cheeks as her head rests on my shoulder, the afternoon sun dappled on her arms, which are slung like pendulums from my neck. Although only my back is visible to the viewer, the comfort of holding a sleepy child is unmistakable.
“Oh, Cicely,” I whisper.
Suddenly she looks panicked; has she done the wrong thing? Greg assures her quickly, “It’s beautiful, Cis. You got her exactly right.” He hugs her and then puts his arm around my shuddering shoulders.
I look and look at that sweet face gazing heavy-lidded to the horizon, my face turned into her hair. I can still smell her, the sweat, the smoke from the barbecue in her salt-stiff curls. Still feel the weight of her in my arms, her head heavy in the dip of my shoulder, the one last muscle in her arm to keep the bucket from falling from her grip.
“I wanted to finish it months ago, but with all the holidays, it has been slow going.”
“Thank you,” is all I can say, and summer then threatens to flood the room.
. . .
NIGHT ARRIVES EARLY in the afternoon, the saggy-bellied clouds swaying low over the lakeside cabins. Greg has slept through dinner and I watch as Cicely draws a quilt over him, tucking it around his broad back. Rhiaan has gone to bed early too, with a headache Cicely says plagues him a lot of the time.
“It’s not a tumor,” she says, on the bright side, and hands me a glass of wine as we sit at the kitchen counter. “He had a scan done and everything is normal. Physically there’s nothing wrong with him, so now the neurologist is recommending a psychiatrist.”
“Is he depressed?” I ask, wondering if the Hebrews were right—that the sins of the parents are visited on their children. Does the inevitability of that fate catch up with us the minute we are distracted from our struggle against it?
“Oh, you know your brother. He’s a poet. He’d be the first one to tell you that misery is an art form.” The concern is etched around her smile. Suddenly she starts to cry, and it is so surprising to see her anything but glass-half-full jolly it takes me a moment before I embrace her.
“Have you talked to him?” I ask.
“Sure. We talk, or at least I talk. He makes me feel like I overdramatize everything, but the last time we spoke about his work he said he felt ‘redundant.’ Now you tell me how I am supposed to take a statement like that?”
“Is it writer’s block, you think? Have you read anything of his lately?”
“There have been a couple of poems, but that was a while back. I thought they were good, but it doesn’t seem to matter what I think, and now, to be honest, I’m just too afraid to ask. Maybe you could get him to show you something. Maybe you could talk to him about writing, and about seeing a professional.”
“Rhiaan is not likely to see a shrink, Cis, you know that. It’s just not how we were raised—stiff upper lip, and all that,” I reply. And just for an instant Cicely can’t keep the contempt from her face. Contempt for the broken children from their broken family in their broken backwater country messing up the otherwise sunny landscape of her preordained bounty.
“Maybe that’s part of the problem,” she says.
“Maybe you’re right.”
She looks wrung out, and pats at her cheeks with a leftover napkin before returning to the tasks of domesticity. “What about you and Greg?” she asks. “How are you two handling the trials?” Cicely does not need an acute skill of observation to notice how I shrug Greg off like a shawl on a humid evening.
“Not good,” I say. She nods, and waits for more. “Greg might tell you otherwise. He’s buried himself in the church, and I avoid it. I suppose he feels this weekend is our last hope.”
“A little bit of hope never killed anyone,” she answers, identifying her ally.
THE WORLD IS PLUMP with snow when I get up and the flakes drift down, as though they have all day. The pine trees have cotton-ball branches, and from the eaves dangle icicles. The only sign of activity outside is the smoke drifting up from the chimneys. Inside, Greg and Cicely are sitting on the floor by the window, piecing together a puzzle the size of the coffee table. Thick in conversation, Cicely sees me before I have a chance to eavesdrop.
“Hello, Abbe, how did you sleep?” She hurries to the kitchen and pours from her cat-shaped teapot a mug of fresh tea.
“Okay.” What I don’t tell her is that I have spent half the night hearing her words over
and over in my head—A little bit of hope never killed anyone. It is hope that will pull Rhiaan and Cicely from the quicksand, as it always does. But what did hope ever do for my mother, or for Cleo? What can it possibly do for me and Greg? “Where’s Rhiaan?” I ask.
“Out in the shed. He’s converted it into an office, but it’s more like his cave. You must take a look.”
I put on the parka and Cicely’s boots and walk along the cleared footpath to the shed.
“Brought you some tea,” I announce as I step into the warmth. There is a small potbellied stove in the corner and a rolltop desk that looks as though it comes from Bob Cratchit’s office. On top of it is the Olivetti typewriter. Pinewood-lined walls are shelved with books and framed photographs: Rhiaan with Nadine Gordimer and J. M. Coetzee, Rhiaan shaking hands with Desmond Tutu, Rhiaan sitting with a group of African children outside a rondavel in the middle of the sticks. The small black-and-white photo in the pewter frame gives me pause: Rhiaan as a boy standing on top of a ridge next to our father.
“I haven’t seen this one before,” I say. “Where is that?”
“Eastern Transvaal. Just outside Nelspruit. Ever go to God’s Window?”
I shake my head.
He takes a sip of tea. “They say from the escarpment you can see all the way from the Lowveldt to the front door of the Almighty.”
“Was it open?” I ask, and Rhiaan laughs. “Just wondering if the Almighty has an open-door policy.” When Rhiaan smiles he looks nothing like my father, but when his face succumbs to gravity, the likeness is eerie.
“I don’t remember him ever smiling, do you?” I ask, noticing how in the photograph my father does not have his arm around his son, does not even stand close enough for their sides to touch; how the view of all creation yawns between them.
“There were times,” Rhiaan counters.
“Like when?”
“Like when you were born,” he says, and I am reminded that Rhiaan’s memories are not my own. “I remember him having a big barbecue when Mom came home from the hospital with you, and all his buddies from work came over to have a look.” I feel a twinge of delight—maybe there were times he wasn’t the bogeyman. “And then he got as pissed as a fart and left a helluva mess for Mom to clean up!” He laughs, and I roll my eyes.
I sip my tea and change the subject. “Cicely says you’re going back to receive some fancy award?”
“Oh, I haven’t decided yet. They’re opening an apartheid museum in Cape Town and they have a wing dedicated to the artists of ‘protest works,’ whatever that is.”
“You’re not excited.”
“To tell you the truth, I am tired of talking about the past. It’s gone, it’s done; whether I like it or not, there’s no going back and changing it.” Is my brother giving me advice? “You’ve got to lean with all your might against the boulder of the present and wedge it loose, even if it means you have to watch it careen into your neatly built idea of the future.”
There falls between us a soupy silence. After a while he looks up from his mug. “So what are you up to these days, Ab? How are you doing?” He squints, rubbing the spot between his eyes.
“Well, let’s see. I get up before noon most days, write a few hundred words of nonsense they keep printing in the magazine, and count the hours before I can go back to bed.”
“Don’t ever underestimate what a courageous thing it is to get out of one’s bed each day.”
“Speak from experience, do you?”
“My wife been talking to you?”
I nod.
He gets out his pipe and tobacco pouch. “She makes too much of things.”
“Depression is a serious thing.”
“Cicely always worries about those things over which she has no control rather than letting things run their course. She calls it depression so she can speed up the process with a Prozac-inspired happy ending. But I think we have to hold out for the real thing.”
“She says you are working on some new poems. Got anything you could show me?”
From a binder of loose sheets and newspaper clippings, he extracts a page. In single-spaced Times New Roman is an untitled poem.
Waste not your woe, O Breath
upon the wooden grain you
mistake for flesh.
For kindness rather a spark proffer
Not to singe or maim and
with regret hastily smother;
Not for spite, nor shame,
nor pity for rhymes untold.
For perhaps one last blaze
a towering glory,
a phase, this pyre will trade
an ashy mound.
What scars, what charry husk
then, tempting sorrow Coeur;
What kindness then to puff
and words shall be no more;
Only wind and scatterlings,
across the rooftops I shall soar,
bid adieu to telluric shores,
and bonjour, upon winged hope,
to birth, to life once more.
“It’s lovely. It’s so tragic, and suicidal, and hopeful.”
He grins. “Glad you like it.”
I get up and give him a hug, and then return to my seat. “Give me a copy, will you?”
“Only if you pinkie-promise not to show it to Cis. She’ll surely have me committed.”
“Only if you pinkie-promise not to set yourself on fire!”
He holds out his little finger and I reach over to clasp it with my own.
Just then a cold gush rushes in as Cicely opens the door. “Come on, you loafers. Let’s go find some snow!”
Before I leave, I browse the shelves for a book. Rhiaan has always organized his library the way an aspiring Don Juan might organize his lovers: autobiographically. Books he fell in love with at school sit in the shelves next to those that seduced him in college. There are the early-exile books, the pre-Cicely tomes, and a rather sparse section that he says are for the books he read when his children were very little. Every ten years or so he adds a new classification, and although this system works quite nicely for him, it is a bugger for guests who perhaps want to find a light historical novel or a saucy romance. You have better luck choosing a book by its cover, which is what I do now, running my hands along the spines till they come to rest on the faded yellow back: The Works of Alexander Pope.
“That Pope!” I exclaim. “Of course!”
THE AFTERNOON LIGHT passes across the pages of my book, then dims until I can read no more. “Roast lamb and new potatoes, with mint sauce,” announces Cicely. “To remind you of home.” My sorrowful sister-in-law of the night before has given way to the one who punctuates the day with meals and merriment.
“Sounds good,” I fib.
When we gather around the dining table, decorated with tea lights and a potted poinsettia, Rhiaan’s place is empty.
“Rhiaan is going to eat later,” she says. “He’s not feeling too well at the moment.” But no sooner has she made the announcement than he comes in and sits down. Frowning, he turns off the overhead light so that we are illuminated only by Cicely’s candles. “Anybody mind?” he asks.
“Ambience,” jokes Greg. “It’s what makes an entrée cost twenty dollars more in a fancy restaurant.”
We pass the platters, scooping generous portions on our plates, if not for appetite’s sake, then for Cicely’s, while she fills the wineglasses, careful to skip over Rhiaan’s.
“I think I will have some wine, my dear,” he insists, and without fuss she fills his glass. The conversation turns from the weather forecast to plans for skiing and then, without warning, to Lent.
“What are you two giving up for Lent this year?” asks Cicely. “You always give up the most unusual things.”
“Ah,” sighs Greg, pleased to gnaw on the idea.
“I remember when you gave up guns.” She laughs.
“Hey, have you ever tried sitting through the news without seeing a gun of some sort? It was the longest f
orty days of my life!” says Greg.
“I am going to give up dieting,” Cicely announces, and we all laugh. “What?”
“Dear God, woman, that’s about as necessary as giving up vacations to Baghdad!” exclaims my brother.
“Okay, Rhiaan, what’s your big sacrifice?” she retorts.
“Don’t ask me to give up pork rinds,” he jokes. “My comforts are few and far between.”
“I thought I might give up nostalgia,” Greg interjects, turning the air serious.
“Say more, young man,” says Rhiaan.
“It seems to me that the older I get, the more I yearn for my past. For the neighborhood I grew up in, the little community events, my old school pals. I suspect that if I went back there I would still feel nostalgic. So it’s a deceptive thing, isn’t it? Nostalgia traps you into believing the past was better than what’s up ahead.”
Could he have said anything worse? If it weren’t for Cicely’s earlier salute to hope, I would stand up right now and say, You jerk! The past was better than what’s ahead because the past had Cleo. It is these abstract theoretical constructs of Greg’s that drive me to despair. He might as well have said, “I’m giving up memories,” or “I’m giving up Cleo.”
Cicely does not bang him over the head with the pot lid but nods, listening intently while I assassinate the peas on my plate. It is when Rhiaan speaks that I look up. “It is nostalgia for the things that will not come to pass that is better to give up,” he says. “A homesickness for the home you do not yet have.”
“Careful, Rhiaan. Sounds like you’re dancing dangerously close to theology,” Greg jests.
Rhiaan shakes his head. “I’m not talking about the eternal home to which you and your flock feel assured of reaching. What I’m talking about is the absence between having potential and having fulfilled none of it.”
“Oh, thanks a lot,” says Greg with an embarrassed laugh.
“Speak for yourself!” Cicely scolds her husband.
“Oh, but I do, my dear. Hear me out. It’s when you look back and realize that the thing you did all those years ago is probably the best thing you ever did and are ever capable of doing, and that no matter how much you try, you are not ever going to be able to capture the glory again. The irony, of course, being that back then you were too young to enjoy it and now you are old enough to realize it had little to do with talent or effort on your behalf.” And to Greg: “No offense, old chap, but it seems to me that rather than give up nostalgia you should give up the notion of achieving happiness altogether—”
