Sherbrookes: Possession / Sherbrookes / Stillness (American Literature Series)

by Delbanco, Nicholas

  “We should be going,” says Elvirah. “No point in putting it off.”

  Ian leads the group along the upstairs hall. Jane is in the costume room along with the Fisk twins; they wear pinafores and bonnets. Jane’s whalebone corset brushes the floor; she drapes it from her shoulders like an overcoat. She is wearing lipstick also, and lipstick highlights on her cheeks. She smiles at him half-fearfully and takes three steps and puts her arms around his knees.

  “We’re playing,” Jane says. “Pretend.”

  “Yes. I see that.”

  Kathryn and Amy seem abashed. They look at him through lowered lids, then look at the grouping behind him—Samuel Coffin, the two old ladies, Vito, and the rest. He puts his hand on Jane’s head. “Having fun?”

  Her reply is muffled. He feels like an intruder, in some stall where women dress.

  “How old are you?” asks Lucy.

  “Three and a half.”

  “A smart one.” Vito waggles his hand.

  “May she have her mother’s looks,” Samuel Coffin pronounces. “And her mother’s brains.”

  “That’s good,” says Vito. “Very good. Her mother’s looks, her mother’s brains.” He chuckles, memorizing this. “Except of course that, if he heard it, Judah’d have your head.”

  “It’s a compliment,” says Samuel Coffin. “I’d have told him to his face.”

  “How many sisters does Cinderella have?” asks Jane.

  “Two,” Ian says.

  “These are my sisters,” she says. “We’re getting dressed for a party.”

  Lucy Gregory advances. “You’ll turn into a pumpkin.”

  Jane seems undecided as to whether she should greet these strangers. She tightens her hold on his arm.

  “Hey, Cinderella, your coach awaits you.” He ruffles her hair. “Come on out.”

  The look she gives him then is Maggie’s glance entirely: a baffled willfulness compounding fear and trust. Perhaps because of Andrew, or the villagers’ gleeful scrutiny, or those twin hostages to Miles who stand beneath the goose-necked lamp in silk and hoopskirts staring up at him—Ian removes her arms. He bends to her and picks her up and shuts his eyes and buries his head in her neck.

  The green grass cloth has faded where the picture hung, or rather not faded so much as retained coloration while the wall around it darkened in some process of response to sun that causes cloth to darken; Maggie sees the picture as if there (not taken off when the glass cracked and left unrepaired in the broom closet, stacked for salvage with those other objects Ian has not yet found the time or interest to redeem), its eighteen- by twenty-four-inch frame a lessening of contrast but sufficient contrast still, the cow and clouds and haystacks Hattie loved to point to, saying, “This is what it looked like when I first learned the way to look,” and the protected rectangle therefore appearing changed, not constant, as if bleached by the absence of sun. The cow had been Ayrshire, clumsily painted, the sienna of its haunch and horn too stridently an aspect of the composition, not the true color of the cow, and its udder too absolute a complement to the haystack at the upper left. It had been done by Hattie’s friend who’d read an article once on Corot, who incised the thick paint with the edge of her palette knife, bluntly, making barbed-wire strands and grass stalks. Maggie remembers those fields with regret, remembers how when young she seemed to be out in them always, always helping Judah or bringing him his lunch or walking to meet him or walking back as if from a secret assignation, though lawful. They’d made a joke of it: he was never in the house and Hattie never out of it, so if they wanted privacy they made love in the woods. And even in old age, when he couldn’t wander far afield, he wore his work boots and bib overalls and that red-and-black plaid shirt she’d given him in 1958. He took himself laboriously off to the outbuildings, puttering, giving orders, making order, or to the Toy House, where he’d sit wrapped in sheepskin, ruminant, so that if she needed him she’d know to look outside.

  “I’m sorry,” Andrew says. “I should have told you.”

  “What?”

  “That I was coming. Planning to come. It isn’t fair to just barge in.”

  “You’re welcome,” she says. “You knew that.”

  “I didn’t. Not really. The last time we talked . . .”

  Maggie releases his arm. They stand in what once served as a solarium. There are bay windows on the southern wall, and ceiling hooks for plants. The plants have gone leggy, however, or brown; some pots hold nothing but dirt. “It’s just too expensive,” she says. “The cost of fuel oil. It isn’t worth it, everything freezes, there’s no point trying.”

  Andrew sits. He stands again. She indicates a brittle, leafless bush.

  “Azalea?”

  “Ian says it’s cheaper just to buy new plants every spring. You’ve no idea”—she shakes her head. “Living in that southern place with someone else paying the bills.”

  “New York,” he says. “It’s not exactly tropical.”

  “No.”

  He watches her. A greenhouse is visible out to the right. An upright piano stands by the door; the piano bench has lost a leg. “May I ask this: how’ve you been?”

  “Surviving,” Maggie says.

  “And Jane?”

  “I wondered when you’d ask.”

  “How is she?”

  “She’s got your mouth. Your coloring.”

  “I’d like to spend some time with her.”

  Maggie moves to the window and fastens the drapes. The drapes are many-pleated, beige, and patterned with an S for Sherbrooke.

  “I’m sorry,” he repeats. “I should have warned you.”

  Ian skis cross-country. She used to do that also, and snowshoe, but it’s been weeks and feels like years since she’s braved the winter weather. The fields have gone so fat with snow they’ve thickened past the second strand of wire, wearing its barbs like a belt. While Judah lived and she was young, such fencing was not threatful, was simply an efficient way to keep the herd contained. It had not seemed an obstacle or augury of tetanus or reminder of the wars. “ ‘Good fences make good neighbors,’ as that rotten farmer said,” she’d say, laughing at the notion of an Ayrshire in the tulip patch, or trampling the sweet peas and eggplant, blundering down gravel paths because the fence was bad: the dream of placid passage where the cow path had been beaten turned to her nightly nightmare of an unleashed animality, all burrs and flies and shit.

  How explain this to Andrew, she wonders? How tell him how her world has been contained? He stands by her side like Boudreau. He has that same hangdog expectancy, that air of previous entitlement—as if his very manhood were a virtue, something to be honored though unearned.

  There are differences, of course. Boudreau is a burned drunk living near the Alagash, and Andrew is what Hattie would have called “distinguished.” He wears expensive clothing and his fingernails are trim. His body has the sort of leanness that signifies wealth—not the half-starved voraciousness of Hal in his long Johns swigging gin. In America, she thinks, the better off you are the skinnier you stay. She swallows, shuts her eyes. Judah or Boudreau or Andrew in this nightmare seem the same. There’s a cat-o’-nine-tails and a set of ankle straps, a mirror and always the bed: there’s beauty as booty, her force-fed submission as prize.

  “It’s been a long time,” Ian says. “How are you?”

  “Fine. Just fine,” says Jeanne.

  “We haven’t talked since New Year’s.”

  “The word was ‘terrific,’ remember? I used to say ‘terrific’ when you asked.”

  “I remember,” Ian says. “Why was Miles in such a hurry?”

  “To leave, you mean?” They stand beneath the cupola. “He’s probably got an appointment. He wants to slip his secretary in between town meetings.”

  “Miles?”

  “I told him when he asked. He asked about you finally. I told him there was nothing left, but there had been something.” She examines her hand. “So he’s making up for all those years of blissf
ul ignorance—catching up. With secretaries, babysitters, even Bill Ellison’s daughter.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Ian says.

  “Why not? He wants an open marriage now—he read about how well it works. That’s why he slapped you on the back and what he meant by leaving me here.” She spreads her fingers carefully, then folds them to her palm in sequence. The thumb remains upright. “Or maybe you’d prefer Bill Ellison’s daughter yourself.”

  “Not likely.”

  “No?”

  “No.” He waves at Samuel Coffin in the far end of the hall, then points for Samuel’s benefit to a stuffed bison head. The bison’s eyes are mottled and the size of billiard balls. “When did you tell him?” he asks.

  “My New Year’s resolution. I told myself I wouldn’t lie. I’d tell him if he asked.”

  “And you said it was over?”

  “I did.”

  Samuel makes his way into the music room. The hall is empty; Ian touches her cheek. “Then tell me why you’re here.”

  “I thought the twins might help.”

  “Help?”

  “Protect me.” Jeanne smiles. “You know, remind me whose mother I am. And whose wife.”

  “I don’t need reminding.”

  “All right. I came because I couldn’t stay away.”

  Again he reaches out for her; again she makes a gesture of resistance. “It isn’t over,” he says.

  “No.”

  “I’ll call in the morning.”

  For an instant, standing there, he hopes she will refuse him. It would provide finality. Her body is bulky with clothing, and at a four-foot distance from his own. But any stranger watching them would know they had been naked together; Jeanne breathes as though beneath him. “Call at ten o’clock,” she says.

  “Am I forgiven?” Andrew asks.

  Maggie imitates politeness. “What have you been up to? It’s been years.”

  “I’ve missed you,” he says. “Very much.”

  “You’re sweet to say so. Where’ve you been?”

  “Nowhere in particular. New York. I didn’t mean I knew I missed you, but I know it now.”

  “A pretty phrase,” she says. She cannot control herself. “You might have called.”

  “I did. I tried.”

  “Not hard enough. Once in four years.”

  His contriteness, too, is brief. “Well, where were you? Don’t they have telephones here?”

  “It wasn’t up to me to call. My God, we’re squabbling like a married couple.”

  “Marry me,” he says.

  This too is echo, repetition, a reminder of when last they’d met and he meant it, or seemed to, asking him to marry her because Judah had died and she need not divorce him and they had twenty good years left, with impediments removed. He’d used the phrase “impediments removed,” and she asked did he mean Judah by that, and he’d hesitated, saying no, not really, just they were past fifty now and had no reason to wait.

  “She is your child,” says Maggie. “Jane.”

  Andrew puts his hand to the wall but seems to lean no weight on it. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I did.”

  “Before, I mean.” His hand rests where the picture had hung. “When it was happening, when you were pregnant.”

  Maggie has an answer, but it would take too long to say and is an ancient tale. Nor would it flatter Andrew. It has to do, she wants to say, with debts she’d tried to pay alone and the secretive pleasures of pride, with her aged shocked sister-in-law and a pileated woodpecker and much he had no notion of. It has to do with Ian’s return, how he’d played Judah’s surrogate, with the weather, the corncrib, the fresh coat of paint, with lawyers and doctors and busily inquisitive neighbors, the way she’d lain awake for months to hear Jane’s every whimper till that solitary wakeful watch seemed sane.

  Andrew coughs. “I should have known.”

  How tell him that she’d tried for weeks to put his face in focus, to make him more a presence than the dead man who still quickened her? Yet Andrew’s face stayed featureless as that rectangle of grass cloth, a blankness that she’d tried to read till curiosity faded, till she told herself the baby could come from a sperm bank for all that it mattered. What mattered was Jane; what counted was the number they made, making two, making even Ian superfluous. How tell him she had waited for some second call or visit, some sign that she could answer with no fear of having hauled him north or playing the outraged maiden in a paternity suit? She’d managed; they’d managed; she had been doing just fine, thank you, till her managing ability collapsed.

  “You’ve no idea . . .” says Andrew.

  Maggie rouses. “What?”

  “How peculiar this is. How strange it makes me feel. I drive on up because your son says you’re in trouble.”

  She shakes her head. “You mustn’t blame Ian,” she says.

  “And you look as lovely as ever. Untouched.”

  Her feet are cold. Her ankles ache.

  “Does Jane know I’m her father?”

  “No.”

  “Does anyone but Ian?”

  “Not for certain. No.”

  “So everyone thinks she’s a Sherbrooke.” Andrew nods. “And for all practical purposes, I’m the one who’s dead!”

  “I wouldn’t put it that way.”

  “Why not? What other way is there to put it? If I’d hung up on Ian, if I’d been out of town or happened to be busy, if I turn around now and go home”—he snaps his fingers—“why, this never happened. Kincannon just doesn’t exist.”

  “You could do that,” Maggie says. “I wouldn’t blame you at all.”

  “This never happened,” Andrew repeats. “If I drive back to Westport without you.”

  “It’s your decision,” she says.

  “March 9. Temperature at six o’clock, thirty-one degrees. Wind moderate, southerly. My grandfather sent letters to strangers, the architects commissioned for this house. My aunt sent letters not to strangers but to her brother my father. And I am grown so inward lately that my letters are this daybook self-addressed. There is correspondence at the bank. There are certain tasks it is my duty to perform. But I am struck by such a declension; how Peacock took for granted that his instructions would be followed the width of a continent distant. And how his daughter in her turn urged instruction on her near and dear though far. I am reduced. I write to myself in secret. There will be enquiries. The shame is inward only and confounded by relief. I whisper here what I would hesitate to confide to Lavinia—who knows nothing of the episode as yet, who must be kept from shock—and cannot tell the coroner: I believed our guest my brother when he died.

  “His thin chest heaved. He lay on the sacking like Job on his dunghill; it was five o’clock. I brought him a boiled chicken, but he could not eat. In his Delirium he waxed profane—cursing me and mine and God and Theodore Roosevelt, pausing only to cough: a hacking, rasping sound I shall not soon forget. It echoes in my study still. He claimed that he was well not ill, was perfectly able to rise except he might be poisoned by a brother if he stood.

  “The doctors were tardy. I had sent word with Benjamin to fetch Bill Robinson or, failing him, Joseph Miller. Yet they arrived too late. It transpired suddenly. No human agency, I am persuaded, could have saved him then. One instant he was talking of his mother’s excellence, the way her hands were strong and gentle both at once, fit equally for soothing him or wringing roosters’ necks. Then next he seemed to see her, raising up one elbow and speaking French endearments that I could not understand. Transfigured. It is the word. There is no other adequate. He reached for her as if for salvation, then fell back.”

  Big-bellied, protuberant, set back on his heels like a woman in her last trimester, Junior Allison walks in. He wears his duffel coat and boots; his nose is red. “Miles sent me,” Junior announces. “Said I should drive these folks back home.”

  Jeanne enters behind him. She smiles at her daughters, “Time for supper. Get out of those
costumes. Come on.”

  “It’s easy driving now,” says Junior. “No problem.”

  He drives the village taxi in all weathers, equably. He has been doing so since anyone can recall, and is “Junior” still at seventy; he used to help out Judah. His limousine is ancient, with a blue sheriff’s light affixed to the top. The left rear fender is red, the windows have been shorted out and fail to shut. But Junior washes and waxes and dries his car with avid exactitude still, and his calling cards read: “Driver Service,” not “Taxi.” He does not stop for strangers if he does not like their looks; often as not he leaves the bus terminal as passengers arrive.

  “Going so soon?” Vito asks.

  “It’s not soon,” Jeanne says. “It’s five o’clock nearly. This open house will shut.”

  “Four forty-five,” says Ian. “I’ll walk you out.”

  The girls have divested themselves. She hangs up their costumes, ignoring him.

  “What about the power line?” Samuel Coffin asks. “Any lights back on down there?”

  “Not yet,” says Junior. “But they’ve got it located. They’ll fix it by suppertime, maybe.”

  Elvirah Hayes adjusts her scarf. She fiddles with the buttons of her long black coat. “It’s been such a pleasure,” she says. “So interesting, Ian, such a nice way to visit. I particularly liked the scrimshaw. ‘John Smythe. His horn.’ Can you imagine . . .”

  “Say good-bye upstairs for us,” Lucy adds.

  “I will. And this summer I’ll bring you those pears.”

  “Seckel pears,” Elvirah says. “The ones from the stand by the icehouse. That’s not till late October.”

  “November sometimes,” Peg Morrisey says. “They’re mostly good for pies.”

  Samuel Coffin stands. He walks as if the parquet were a tightrope, wobbling, weaving. “Long as you’re driving,” he says to Junior. “How ’bout a ride?”