Eden Burning

by Belva Plain

  Now a scattering of amateurish, poorly focused snapshots lay on the desk next to the window where she stood with her back to the room. Having been forced to glance at them, having touched them with her eyes, she had pulled away, as one pulls the hand from a hot surface.

  “You don’t even want to look at him properly.” Agnes spoke quietly, yet Teresa felt challenge. “I’d like to know what you’re thinking right now. Yes, I’d like to know.”

  Somewhere below, around the corner of the house, came the flutelike call of a child. Teresa trembled.

  “I feel—I want to sink into a hole where no one could see me. Or get on a ship and go as far as it sails.”

  “As far as it sailed it couldn’t take you far enough.”

  Teresa turned around. “How did you find me here?”

  “Easy enough. In the New York telephone book. And somebody said you were in the country for vacation week.”

  “You always did know how to manage things.”

  “I had to learn. I never had anyone to manage them for me.”

  Delicately, without sound, Agnes placed the teacup in the saucer. Her feet, in their neat black shoes, were crossed at the ankles. Unobtrusively, she had already examined the room: the pale carpet, the marigolds in the dark-blue ginger jars and the photographs, these of an intimacy that belongs in an upstairs sitting room. Plainly she approved of what she saw. Elevé au chapeau, Teresa remembered suddenly, irrelevantly.

  Agnes raised her eyes. “Don’t be afraid of me,” she said gently.

  Afraid? No, terrorized. This must be the true experience of terror: the second before the fall through empty air … the strange footstep coming up the stairs at night …

  “I’m not here to harm you. I could have talked long ago when I went back to the island, couldn’t I? But I’m not cruel, I’m a decent woman. Besides, I want to protect my son, my Patrick. You don’t think I want him to know the truth, do you?”

  “Patrick,” Teresa repeated.

  “Well, you never gave him a name. So that’s it, Patrick Courzon.”

  “I didn’t know you had gone back home. Père never mentioned in his letters.”

  “He saw the boy once. I took him there when he was three, then never again…. You’ve broken your necklace.”

  Her cold, sweating hands had been twisting and twisting. Now blue beads rolled across the floor.

  Agnes bent to pick them up. “Your nerves. But I keep telling you, I haven’t come to ruin you. What good would that do anyone? I only need help for him, for his education. He wants to go to Cambridge.”

  Something throbbed and stabbed in Teresa’s head. That figure printed on film. That quick impression of tallness and thinness, of teeth, of a white shirt—all of it lived and had been taken out of her, was of her. And if someone had asked—but Agnes had just asked a moment ago! What do you feel?—she could have answered only, I feel ruin. I taste the poison. Nothing left: no children, no home, no name. Richard would—it did not bear thinking of, what Richard would do.

  “Seventeen years!” she cried out. “After seventeen years you come to me with this! My God, do you know what you’re doing to me?”

  Agnes said evenly, “Give me what I ask for, then, and I’ll never come near you again.”

  Could one believe her?

  “You do want to know what he looks like, don’t you? Only it’s hard for you to say so. All right, I’ll tell you. He has the Francis nose, like you and your grandfather. And he’s light. I’ve seen Italian sailors in Covetown not much fighter. I think really it’s only his hair that gives him away.”

  Agnes had not oiled her hair that day; it coiled and crimped—one sensed the primitive, looking at that hair. Such curious and devious tracks does memory follow: one thought of drums, looking at that hair. Of drums? Years ago on the plantations, so Père had said, you could hear them all day Sunday, and once the child Tee herself had seen the African dance, the heat and stamp of the calinda, powerful and hot.

  She wiped her forehead, pulling herself back into the present. “I can get you the money. I will.”

  Richard took charge of the investments and the bank accounts. But she could always sell a bracelet. There were so many of them. He bought too many expensive, unnecessary things.

  “Yes, I’ll get it for you. Then you’ll leave me alone? After all, he’s yours, isn’t he, yours?” It’s only his hair that gives him away. “I have four children of my own, my husband’s and mine. Three girls.” Long, silvery hair like limp silk on their shoulders. “And my son, my first.” My lovely boy, my strong and gentle boy; I have never said so and never will, but he knows and I know, he is my heart. “I can’t let anything happen to them!” she cried harshly.

  “Of course you can’t.”

  “If—he—were ever to find out, it would all be over.” She flung her arms out. “He would pull this house down! He’s not the kind of man who would even try to understand … forgive …”

  “What man is?” Agnes regarded her with grave, sad eyes. “I tell you, put this out of your mind. I was a mother to you, do you forget? More than Miss Julia ever was.”

  “That’s true.” There was no real memory of Julia, other than a pastel presence. No joy, nor conflict, either. And Teresa thought, Is that, perhaps, why I am what I am? I suppose, if I cared enough, I could be analyzed—goodness knows it’s the fashionable thing to do these days—and then I would know; know, too, why I can be repelled by the Negro-ness of Agnes and a moment later find warmth and comfort in her.

  “My little girl, Margaret, is retarded,” she said suddenly, not having intended to. “Not a normal child. She will never grow up.”

  “I’m very sorry, Miss Tee.”

  “You know, sometimes I’ve had the craziest idea—that she might be a punishment.”

  Agnes nodded. “Not crazy. I’ve seen things like that.”

  But of course it was crazy, absurd. Only a peasant from a place like St. Felice could believe it: a lingering atavism out of centuries long past, flitting through the mind in moments of gloom.

  Agnes touched a photograph on a table. “Is this your husband? A handsome man.”

  “Yes.” When she was angry, she thought of him with contempt. An advertisement for hand-tailored suits. A male flirt, a chaser.

  She was not in a position to complain.

  “You’re happy enough? He’s good to you?”

  These were less questions than statements; the fine polish of the room, the long fields and graceful trees beyond the windows would, for someone like Agnes, who had nothing, very likely be compensation for almost anything.

  “He’s good to me. I’m happy.”

  For in his way, Richard was fond of her. The strange allure of the “different” young girl from the foreign island had long ago, and predictably, worn off, but he was basically kind and had, moreover, grown up among people who seldom divorced their wives. He had no reason—none that he knew of!—to desert her.

  With their children he was good-natured, patient even with poor Margaret’s sticky hands and silly laughter; proud of the other daughters and of Francis, the precocious, lively boy. How had they begot such a boy? There was nothing of Richard in him except for fair hair and a certain way of smiling.

  And she thought, sitting across from Agnes’s soft, penetrating gaze, We never talk about anything true except the children. We have never entered together into the heart of anything. But it didn’t matter. Even the “other women” really didn’t matter. She had given her life to the rearing of children, much as a botanist concentrates on his experiments, the temperature of the greenhouse, and the chemistry of the soil.

  She wanted, suddenly, to talk about Francis. “My son, my son Francis reminds me of my father.”

  “You can remember him?”

  “A little, I think. I remember the stories he read to me. His voice was beautiful.”

  He was a long, tired shape under white bedclothes, lying in a room where the shutters were always closed against the
glare of light. A black hearse, pulled by two sweating horses with black plumes on their heads, carried him away.

  “He died bravely. He suffered and never complained.”

  “Père always said the Francises were tough. He said I was, too, even though I didn’t think I was. He said it makes life bearable, that toughness.”

  “Your grandfather certainly had it,” Agnes said grimly. “You know what he did to Clyde. Not that it wasn’t to be expected, a colored boy—”

  “You think that was the reason? That he wouldn’t have done the same to anyone?”

  Agnes smiled. “No. He had hatred, Miss Tee. He only thought he hadn’t.”

  Tee was silent. Clyde, his life and his death, but most of all his death, must be stifled and buried under layers of secrecy and trembling.

  “Still,” Agnes reflected, “I don’t curse him for what he did. There’s murder in every one of us. I know I would kill for Patrick if I had to.”

  The silence thrummed and hummed.

  “Tell me, Miss Tee, do you ever see your mother?”

  She wet her dry lips. “They’ve been here twice to visit.”

  “But you? You never want to go there?”

  “No, never.” Again the silence hummed. In a moment the humming would burst in Tee’s head, would roar and crash into a scream. And laying her fingers on her quivering mouth, she looked past Agnes’s head into the mirror that minutes ago had reflected only a pastel mosaic of flowers and books, but now thrust back into the room a fearful face, collapsed in a repression of tears.

  She ran to Agnes. A shoulder received her; a hand soothed her back. She spoke, muffled, into the shoulder.

  “I can’t afford to cry.”

  “I know. Otherwise, I’d say ‘cry it out, you’ll feel better.’ But you can’t dare to.”

  Tee raised her head. “I’ve been lying to you. No, not lying, either. It’s just—I don’t know how I feel. I never do. I don’t really know what the truth about myself is. Oh, I do want to know what he’s like, I do! And still I’m afraid to know. Afraid because—because of what he is. Forgive me, Agnes.”

  “You don’t have to say that. You think I’ve lived all these years in the world without knowing a few things about it?” There was grieving in the voice, voice of an old woman who has seen too much. “All right, I’ll tell you more. He’s a quiet boy, gentle, thinks about things. Half the time I can’t figure out what he’s thinking. Ambitious, too, only it’s not money he wants. And proud. Light as he is, he’s proud of being black. Prouder than some who’re coal black. Queer, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, yes.” Sad and queer.

  “And is he happy, Agnes?”

  “He has friends. People like him. Yes, I’d say he’s as happy as anyone…. I don’t know what else to tell you. It’s hard to describe all these years in a few words. But he’s been the best part of my life, he has.”

  “I remember the day you took him. I wanted to look at him—and I didn’t want to. And I’ve been ashamed of the not wanting to, ever since.”

  “There wasn’t anything to be ashamed of! You were barely sixteen and frightened to death. You had plenty of courage, though, never think you didn’t.”

  “I often think there are two kinds of courage. There’s the kind that holds on, just quietly endures, has a plan and clings to it. That’s my kind, that’s what my life is. But the greater courage is being able to risk, just plunge off the path into the unknown. And that I’m not able to do.”

  “Come out with the truth, you mean.”

  Tee nodded. Suddenly she was aware that she was breathing hard, winded as though she had been running.

  “You’d be a fool to do that. And I’d say it even if I didn’t want Patrick for my own. You’d be exchanging him for all this.” Agnes waved her arm at the room.

  “You know I don’t care about things that much. I can get along with much less than this, Agnes!”

  “The four children? The husband?”

  “The children,” Tee said, very low.

  “I see. That’s how it is! You should have had more. You should have had a man to love all your life.”

  Tee’s smile was faint. “So should you.”

  “I don’t need it as much as you do. I never did. You had a heap of loving in you from the time you could walk. You were born like that.”

  “I loved you, didn’t I, Agnes? You and Père. And now I’ve got Francis. I wish you could see him. Everything you said about—Patrick—I could say about him. He’s quiet, gentle, curious …”

  From below stairs came sounds of doors and feet. Agnes stood and put on her hat.

  “I’d better leave before somebody comes and gives you questions to answer. But you will take care of that?”

  “I will. And I hope—I wish everything that’s good for him. I’ll think, somewhere, making his way in the world, there’s this boy who—” She stopped.

  Agnes took Tee’s hand between both of hers. It was an old gesture, long forgotten, now suddenly recalled.

  “Agnes? After you’ve left I’ll think of so much more I should have said. About everything you’ve done for me and what you are and how I love you.”

  “You don’t have to tell me all that. I know.”

  They went downstairs to the door. On the threshold Agnes turned back, her gaze directed past Teresa into the hall, dim now in the fading afternoon.

  “I see things. You remember how I could always see things.”

  “What things? What do you mean?”

  “He’ll come back into your life, Patrick will. Not through me, no, never through me! And maybe not into your life, I’m not sure. But into your children’s. Yes. I see that clearly.”

  Teresa made no answer. Again the primitive, she thought, reassuring herself. Superstition, out of Africa. That, too, was part of Agnes. But her hands shook so that she could barely close the door and slide the bolt.

  Later Francis asked, “Who was that colored woman with you this afternoon? I passed your room when I came upstairs.”

  “My old nursemaid. I guess that’s what you’d call her.”

  “From St. Felice? What was she doing here?”

  “She has a cousin working somewhere nearby, I think.”

  “I’m writing about St. Felice for economics, did I tell you? All about sugar prices and the competition of European beet sugar. People are always curious—even my teacher was—when I tell them my mother grew up on St. Felice.”

  “There’s nothing so strange about it,” Teresa said patiently.

  “Well, they think it’s all pirates and volcanoes, I suppose. But you know, when I read that diary of the first François, it was thrilling, actually.”

  Actually was the fad word this season at school. The youthfulness of this, the innocent boast of the basketball letter on his sweater, these as well as the two parallel lines across a forehead only sixteen years old—touched her sharply. She wanted to respond to his enthusiasms.

  “I suppose, too, they think we’re all sugar millionaires?”

  “Oh, of course! And,” Francis added, somewhat shyly, “they’ve got a lot of ideas about interracial sex. But I tell them”—he laughed—“I tell them we’re all white, there’s none of that in our family.”

  She was aware that her hands flew to knot themselves in her lap, then moved to twine on the dressing table among the combs and powder boxes.

  “I mean to go there someday, even if you won’t go.”

  “It’s not as romantic as you think it is. You’d be disappointed. And”—prodding gently—“you’d do better to concentrate on getting into Amherst year after next, since that’s where you want to go.”

  “I’ll do that, don’t worry,” Francis said with his father’s stubborn, charming smile.

  Of course he would. He was a scholar. And Agnes’s voice sounded in her head: A scholar. Never a minute’s trouble…

  “You’re frowning,” Francis said.

  “Am I? I didn’t mean to.”

 
“Things go hard with Margaret today?”

  “No harder than usual.”

  Francis thrust his hands into his pockets, jingling coins, as masculine a gesture, she thought, as girls’ fishing for their shoulder straps was a feminine one.

  “Want me to help you get her to bed?”

  “That would be nice. I am a little tired tonight, really. And she does behave better for you than for any of us.”

  He looked thoughtfully at his mother. “People say you’re wearing yourself out.”

  “Who says?”

  “Oh, friends and Dad’s family and even the maids. Just about everybody.”

  “They think I ought to put Margaret away someplace.”

  “Just a special school,” he said gently, lowering his eyes.

  “I wish they would all leave me alone!” she cried.

  The boy was troubled. “Some people say you seem to be punishing yourself.”

  “Punishing myself! For what, I ask you?”

  “I don’t know, Mother.”

  A punishment, she had said to Agnes.

  “Dad asked me to talk to you about it again, because you won’t listen to him.” Now Francis raised his eyes. Clear, beautiful, candid eyes they were, the only ones in all the world that could speak to her. “I said I would, but it wouldn’t be any use. I told him you couldn’t just desert a child like that. It’s not her fault that she was born the way she was.”

  “You think that, too,” she murmured.

  “I think it would be easier for you to send her away. Most people would, but you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t do that to your own child.”

  There was such hell in her heart! And she turned away, so that he should not see its reflection in her face.

  “Shall I go bring Margaret upstairs?”

  “Yes, do, please.”

  Desperately she looked around the room, a room to which, as to the whole house, she had given her love, expressing it in the homely shapes of dear, familiar things: Francis’ old, stuffed bear on top of a cabinet, a photo of the girls in party dresses, a framed snapshot of her first beloved Airedale, a row of garden books. There was no comfort tonight. Shadowed, alien, the room drew back from her, the walls receding, vanishing, so that the world’s chill swept in….