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

by Delbanco, Nicholas

  Allison grins, “You’d best not walk,” he says. “You’d take a swan dive off that porch.”

  Ian turns to Lucy and Elvirah and Peg Morrisey. “Ladies,” he says. “This is what you would have been wearing sixty years ago.” He picks a single silver fox off the hook it dangles from and wraps it around Jeanne’s throat. The fox has marble eyes and an open mouth and ebony teeth; he places the tail in the teeth.

  “The not-so-quick brown fox,” says Jeanne. She disentangles herself. Junior sets his blue light flashing; Jeanne bundles the twins in the front. Ian waits beside the car and helps the elder ladies in, then Samuel Coffin and Vito and, finally, Jeanne. She squeezes his hand, but he offers no answering pressure. She occupies the jump seat and leans forward to address her daughters. They leave.

  Ian thinks of Joseph’s dutiful recording—how the crops and temperature, the weather of those years was faithfully transcribed. His own middle name is Daniel, as befits an elder Sherbrooke son; Judah’s middle name was Porteous, from his mother’s side. If Joseph’s visitor were truly Daniel Jr.’s son, and Joseph’s ancestry had been—in the journal’s words—“provable cadet,” then they had indeed inherited the Big House by right of mere possession. Daniel Jr. had been written out of Peacock’s will. He had been his father’s first-born who did not return. He disappeared from San Francisco, heading west. West was on some fishing fleet or expedition after seals or oils or silk; west was the trading impulse, still, the face that faced a setting sun until it reached the Orient and east. West was nothing manifest and not in the family archives; it was earthquakes and fire and opium dens. There were bodies on the cliffs; there were bodies in the wake of ships and unmarked graves and potters’ fields, a multitude of bodies like the crossties on the tracks. Daniel Sherbrooke Jr.’s name was legion: sand in wind.

  Yet certain things continue. Ian imagines Peacock’s will—a document he no doubt could find in Finney’s files—as evidence of the old man’s litigious zeal. Judah inherited that. He was forever revising bequests, as if each actual or imagined courtesy and slight should be attested to. Their father, Hattie used to say, had been considerate; he would ask permission of every lady present before he’d even dream of lighting a cigar. And Ian sees himself these days as both a scribe and witness, more kin to Joseph’s mild-mannered abiding than he would have guessed. If Judah had been there to tell him, Ian thinks, he might have saved some time. He might have known he’d be his grandfather’s own meditative ineffectual well-intentioned grandson, a stitch in generation-time but cut from the same cloth. He ascends the porch steps heavily, stamping the snow free.

  Maggie asks herself what right he has, what forfeit of integrity his very presence posits; Andrew opens the door and it too makes a frame. It is both entrance to and exit from a space she’s filled for years, this composition made of oak and paint and brass. The hinges are silver and six inches high. The door opens into the hall. There is a mirror opposite, and she sees herself reflected as she takes a final survey, turning as she’d turned from Judah once to dive from high dock pilings. Where she stands is split precisely, half in and half out of the hallway as in water—so that if he’d hooked her and she was his yellow fish, she might have been rising, not diving, or as if a hand-cranked home movie were being reeled backward, and she could do a swan dive up anytime he turned the wheel, emerging poised and dry and toes together from the sea. All she needs to know is direction: study that door. Does the woman enter it or leave? Is she familiar with her surroundings? Is she threatened by them, or do her shoreline certainties extend? Will she be pleased? What waits behind the door, at her sight’s fuzzy limit, and will it harm or give her pleasure and how may she decide? The frame is eighteen inches above her head, since Peacock Sherbrooke built high, and twelve to either side, since he envisioned spreading skirts and swallowtail frock coats and persons of stature or girth like his wife’s. The light has gone so dim, however, that what she extinguished was darkness not light. She shuts her eyes. The barn, pond, hydrangea, grass-cloth frame, and matron in a doorway disappear.

  PART III

  I

  “March 12. Five days since our visitor’s death. Temperature at six o’clock, twenty-one degrees. Wind due west. There is a beast within my body that seems to take pleasure in pain. It fattens on grief like a vulture on carrion, and the greater the carnage the gladder the feast. If Man were fully aspirant to sanctity and sanity, Angelic orders would have triumphed in their battle with the Dark. But no such work as Darwin’s undertakes the soul. It does not seem to me Humanity progresses as the species Homo Sapiens becomes more broadly sapient. The ‘Origin of Speciousness,’ perhaps. We might have lost the usage of our toes to grip tree limbs, and excessive Body Hair with which to thrive in winter, but we never lose the bloodlust that sets humanity against itself to try to establish dominion. The stronger takes to wife the wife of the weaker he kills.

  “He lay on the pallet, exhausted. I asked him at the end if he would call me brother. He did not seem to hear. He turned his head towards the wall and licked his lips continually, with the insatiate thirst of fever. I provided him water and cloths, I asked if Daniel his father had been as furiously quarrelsome as fame reported it; he was said to have been a crack shot. He nodded then and held out his hand—but whether in responsiveness I am unable to say. His fingers curled as if they held the pistol stock, and he took aim. I am reminded of those trading posts in Hudson Bay where Indians were called upon to pile their beavers high as guns, since this was the system of barter. The avaricious trader produced long-barreled rifles so as to receive more beaver pelts. And this in turn made the weapon’s sighting more accurate—the longer the barrel the better the rifleman’s aim. Greed in this manner may ordain its own extinction. That mine enemy grows older is small comfort if I also age—the mirror held so close to nature that breathing on it mists and must erase the mirrored face.

  “I am accounted here, and not without reason in public accounting, an honorable man. Yet murder and rapine and pillage are my Intimates; nightly I riot with maidens called Envy and Lying and Sloth. What should such a creature do upon this earth?”

  Jane comes from the kitchen and, seeing Ian, stops. “Can I have a pretzel?”

  “What time is it?”

  “Just for a snack. I’m hungry, Ian, can I?”

  “It’s after five o’clock,” he says.

  “I haven’t eaten . . .”

  She is in her sleeveless leotard and pink tights and blue denim skirt. She is wearing earrings salvaged from the costume room. “Since when?” he asks.

  “Since breakfast just about. Not since my Froot Loops.”

  “You can have an apple.”

  “A pretzel.”

  “An apple.”

  “Oh, Ian, please,” she says. Jane stares up at him, pleading, with her precocious insistence and that little-girl-lost look he knows she puts on for effect. But the automatic act of bickering over apples or pretzels, milk or Coke, his fear of losing her now Andrew Kincannon has arrived, the fact of her hunting permission to eat and his having neglected to feed her—all this makes Ian mourn. He bends and embraces his sister; she tries to wriggle free.

  “I want a hug,” he says. She tightens her arms at his neck. “You can have pretzels,” he says.

  “March 14. Temperature at six o’clock, fifty-two degrees. Warm dark, surprising mildness, stood outside admiring breeze. Easterly. When my own child attains my age and I am twice my present one, what might we not have witnessed in the interim: the end of war perhaps, the end of famine certainly, the universal brotherhood of race and creed! All this seems possible—nay, plausible, on a day so full of promise, as if winter were extinct. No pestilence or hatred or remorse, no sleeplessness to trouble the dear dream!”

  They return together to the kitchen. He reaches for the pretzels on the topmost shelf. She helps herself to two, then judges him correctly and extracts a third. All through the day he has juggled demands; he has been brother, tour guide, host. He h
olds such roles aloft and in suspension like Indian clubs or oranges. They have labels pasted on: friend, lover, rival, son. He has some skill at juggling and his reflexes are quick. His rhythm is steady, his concentration good, and he has been practicing for years. Yet there is always one orange too many, one trick where the fruit falls and splits . . .

  When Ian hoped to be an actor, he had studied juggling and fencing and mime. “If you want to work at Shakespeare,” his acting coach would say, “first thing you need to know about is how to handle blades. Edged weapons. It’s got to be a third leg, kid, not just something you strap on for the big scene. Fencing, that’s the ticket. The ticket is to know who’s coming at you on what street.”

  “Can I have something to drink?”

  “We’ll eat soon,” Ian says.

  “I’m thirsty.”

  “Milk?”

  “No. Pepsi.”

  “I used to ask for yogurt,” Ian says, “when I was your age and we went out walking.”

  “The twins drink Pepsi. Every time they want it they get to drink Pepsi or Coke.”

  “That’s because they’ve had their milk already.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know. They drink it first thing in the morning. When you’re drinking orange juice . . .”

  “I bet,” Jane says. She licks her fingers for the salt. “What are we having for dinner?”

  “What would you like?”

  “Hot dogs. Hot dogs and ketchup and noodles with butter.”

  “Let me ask you something.”

  “What?”

  “Would you like to stay here with me if Mommy went on a trip?”

  “Where to?”

  “Just a trip.”

  “Australia?”

  “Not that far,” Ian says.

  “Where’s she going?”

  “She isn’t going anywhere. I was only asking.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Upstairs with Andrew.”

  “Andrew Kincannon,” Jane says.

  “That’s right. Do you like him?”

  She moves toward the refrigerator. “When’s supper ready, anyhow?”

  “Would you rather take a trip with them?”

  Jane watches him, alerted. He starts the water boiling, then selects the open Mueller’s thin-spaghetti box. “Not to Australia,” he says.

  “Where?”

  “New York City, maybe. Someplace nice.”

  “Now?”

  “I don’t know. No. I’m just asking.”

  “What about you, would you go?”

  He pours some oil and salt into the pot. He asks, “How hungry are you?” then shakes out the spaghetti. She waits. He sets the timer for eight minutes. “Can I stay?” Jane asks.

  “Yes. If Mommy says so.”

  “With you, okay? They can go on their trip if they want.”

  “One hot dog?” Ian asks. “Or two?”

  “One. And white meat from chicken. And ketchup.”

  “Please.”

  “I don’t have to say it every time,” she says.

  “If you want good manners.”

  “Not every time.”

  “All right. You like the twins, don’t you. Amy and Kathryn.”

  “Mm-mn.”

  “Milk in your Peter Rabbit Cup? Or in a wineglass?”

  “A wineglass,” she says. “It’s its turn.”

  “March 15. Halcyon morning. Temperature at six o’clock, fifty-two degrees. Soft mist in the valley; fields breathe. When I was born this nation was engaged in Civil War; our father sent up thousands as a subscription for troops. Now there are few signs of strife and few such public levies, but I fear the torpor almost as acutely; where there is no Public Standard, the private banners wave. And so it is already in our corner of Vermont; men march to no music but gain. I see this in the Bank. We are rich and getting richer, but the wealth incites and does not assuage penury. I write this in full knowledge that I as Peacock’s grandchild may turn up my nose at profit since his own nose was so keen. Nor is the Bank engaged in charity. But how much more gladly would I disprove than teach that conundrum having to do with riches and camels and needles and the Kingdom of God. My possible brother is dead. His stone will bear no name. I got it from a quarry in receivership in Proctor, and at a bargain price. Have purchased also from the same establishment a stone for Anne-Maria’s child, dead long ago and far away. The meek may inherit the earth, but neither bottomland nor negotiable property; theirs will be the thornbush on the steep side of the hill.”

  The small mechanics of preparation have long since grown familiar; Ian busies himself with her meal. She pulls out her stool; he folds the napkin so it makes a triangle, not rectangle, knowing without asking she wants salt on her spaghetti, wants butter that’s melting and ready to mix. Each of Jane’s gestures seems freighted for him with the weight of loss, and he watches her as closely as he dares. Her hair needs cutting. It is tangled thickly at her neck, and the curls are brown: this is the color her hair turns in winter, or maybe she won’t be the blonde that Maggie was. Her hair needs washing; he determines to give her a bath. Her snub nose is unformed, though the lines in it emerge, and she frowns in concentration as she mashes up the noodles with her poodle fork. The fork in this favorite set has a poodle for handle; the spoon has a dachshund, the knife with its blunt edge has what he imagines is meant to be some sort of bird dog, pointing.

  Jane has lost her baby fat. Her ankles are thin and she sits with them crossed. Her knees show their structure; her shoulder blades show through the leotard top. Her skin has perfect paleness and is clear. She is a beauty already, as Maggie was a beauty, and he hunts some imperfection so she will not grow up vain. Her eyes are flecked with green. The lashes curl. She has dimples in her cheek; her neck is long. She is everything he hoped for in a daughter or a sister, and he tells himself he cannot bear to relinquish her just yet.

  Ian scrubs the colander, then rinses it and sets it in the rack to dry, then towels it dry nevertheless. The house held eighteen servants once, but the dormitory wing has been removed by Judah’s father who, in an access of democratic feeling or good architectural taste, or maybe in order to save on the heat, razed the servants’ quarters and built a greenhouse on the foundation instead. It protrudes from the northwest wall. The panes are cracked. The louvers have rusted, and hothouse grapevines have languished untended for years.

  From time to time, however, Maggie shows a fitful interest in this jumble—cutting back geraniums and starting tomato plants. She potted herbs. But then he’d find her with a broom in hand, her apron on, its pocket full of pebbles and a pair of hand-clippers and length of green string, her face gone blank in concentration, attempting to reconstitute the order once apparent. “I can’t just give it up,” she’d say, trying to repair the pots, to tape the glass or transplant shriveled roots. He’d help, he’d rearrange things till the wreckage bulked less large. But soon enough she’d stop and stare at the tables and dead hanging things, the Christmas cacti left to bloom two years before, the jade plant frozen, fallen, and the mounded dirt. “It’s hopeless, Ian,” Maggie would say. “I’ve got yellow thumbs.”

  There are plastic gloves in the drain. They point limp-wristed at the bowl he still should clean. He picks up the bottle of Joy, squeezes it, then lets the water run. Jane finishes her hot dog and tilts the plate toward him proudly, saying, “See? Now can I have my dessert?”

  “What do you want?”

  “A treat.”

  “What kind?”

  “Nuts and raisins,” Jane pronounces. “For a quick energy lift.”

  She has begun to learn from teachers that he cannot name. She too will leave the Big House, wearing clothes he has not bought in rooms he has not entered. “For energy,” Jane says again and cups her hand. He drops some peanuts in, then raisins: the provider, his palm slick with soap.

  “March 17. Temperature at six o’clock, thirty-eight degrees. Wind gusting northeasterly. A night full
of difficult dreams: Daniel Jr. dressed inpeacock-finery but starving, betting all he owned or could manage to mortgage on an inside straight. An apparition merely, the stomach’s disquiet in sleep. Must inquire of cook regarding cream sauce served with veal. The public and the private man appear more separate than strangers, and that is why this daybook cannot fail to seem peculiar to the curious, if such there be. The daily round, the press of occupation is absent perforce from these sheets—when I work I do not write. I keep no secrets from my wife and all day long engage with her in conversation; therefore Lavinia is also largely absent from my text. It is only of an evening or in the early morning that I sit at ease, in silence, and pen these my secret thoughts: we are a nation fattening on calves that have been fattened for the kill. Who waits in what wings with which knife?”

  “Shall we go find them?” Ian asks.

  “Who?”

  “Mommy and Andrew. It’s time for grown-up dinner. We’ll ask them what they want to eat. You help me cook it, okay?”

  “Okay.” She is out of the kitchen before him, half-skipping, slipping through the swinging door that leads to the back stairs. “Do you like him?” Jane asks.

  “Who?”

  “Andrew Kincannon.”

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “Because.”

  “Because why?”

  “I love you, Ian,” she says.

  Her declaration announces a need. “You don’t have to worry,” he says.

  “Can I tell you a question?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why is Mommy going?”

  “Who says she’s going?”

  “I know.”

  “She’s lonely here. It makes her sad.”

  “But we’re not lonely.”

  “No, But Mommy has no friends up here. That’s why Andrew came to visit us.”

  “Can I make the salad dressing?”

  “Yes.”

  “She looks like dress-up,” Jane declares, “in the clothes she’s wearing now. Except she’s got no coat.”

  “Go ask them,” Ian says, “what time they want to eat.”