“Is that an answer?” Andrew asks. “What are you working on?”
“It is. Because I don’t believe it. I believe they ate a little leftover cornmeal and turnips and maybe the first of the hams. Maybe Samoset brought in some feedcorn from the storehouse.”
Maggie rouses. “We’ve been sold a bill of goods,” continues Ian, and she says, “I’ve heard that before.”
“Yes? From whom?”
“Your father.”
“I don’t remember.”
“He had this theory about Roosevelt. He used to say how Roosevelt’s historians made picture books of settlers bringing in the sheaves. Sitting down to celebrate. When nothing grew that time of year—it was never harvest time in Vermont in November.”
“Well”—Ian smiles—“that’s one thing we would have agreed on.”
“Entirely,” says Maggie. “And more often than you think.”
Andrew, drinking water, has a sudden vision of the winter when New England was true wilderness, not with roadways plowed and salted and honeycombed with motels. Men with names he can barely remember—names in front of libraries or state capitols or churches, names like Hooker and Mather and Shepard and Cobb, Bradford, Bradstreet, Edwards—names that conjure broadcloth and a broadax in conjunction, the preachers felling brush the length of the Connecticut Valley, the men who founded colonies not so much in the image of that England they left as in the image of a New Jerusalem, a place where faith and works, where faith in works was manifest: he sees them dreaming.
The air would be clear. It had the depthlessness of dream. Sight followed it until the horizon was lost, was blue, remaining in the mind’s eye like the kingdom of the just so properly proportioned that it required no king. No tree there stood so tall it seemed distinct, nor mountain peak that belittled the hills, nor cataract that made the stream a tributary merely. The world was frozen, cleansed, air like a knife-edge where such settlers drank. They broke the ice each morning that forbade reflection on the wells. What they saw when bending to the surface of the ice was not their nearing features but a rippled visage of perfection: purity.
It cracked. Evil attended. Evil was corporeal; it had both face and frame. It passed elderberry wine and pumpkin pie and hiccuped, holding its stomach. It continues. It waits leering, stinking, its collar undone, its grease-thick fingers on the rump of some pink parlor wench, using the King’s English and the Bible to calumniate, using gin and water to incite the children sleeping on the bear pelt by the door, feeding slops to the redskin or dogs. It lights its clay pipe and stretches, edging the girl to the fireplace coals and the nearby mattress of straw ticking it can spread her on, and thinking: soft, soft, soft, from here on in it’s soft.
She does not resist. She joins him there with glad abandon, having no reason not to. Men drink. They hoist pewter tankards like the ones on the mantel behind him. They build with wood, then brick, then quarry for marble and slate. Men ford rivers without bridges and make pasture out of forests, and they lay out roadbeds and trainbeds and canals. The firelight was similar; a chicken tracked under equivalent tables for crumbs. The minister attended. Someone sang. A child succeeding in sleep at the far edge of that trestle, her head cradled in her arms, has hair astonishingly like Jane’s; it spills like liquid amber over her crossed wrists.
Maggie stands. She snuffs the candles. Evil and his serving wench were always of such company, but there is another presence. It remains. It makes no noise. Andrew would banish this sight if he could, and he blinks his head to clear it—turning once more to the group in the room, these generations of his newfound family. He smiles. He licks his teeth. Yet the spectacle persists. It intervenes. A figure high as houses is standing in the moonlit dark, right hand resting on an oak, left hand hefting an ax. The ax is double-bladed, eight feet long. The handle is polished up under the blade where the right hand would grip. Its splinters have the girth of logs, and the presence looming at the edges of his vision strokes the blade with fingertips that must themselves weigh pounds. Its shadow fills the door. It does not menace him, however. It studies the tableau within. It appears to ruminate—testing the edge of the blade with an automatic motion, following no rhythm Andrew can establish. It could bring the Big House down as if such toppling were routine.
He is disregarded. Judah ignores him. For Andrew has no doubt it is Judah he senses—out of a compound of weariness and travel and whiskey, a ghost he can’t believe in since he can’t believe in ghosts, a trick of the light or his tension or memory, a hovering persistence—but Judah nonetheless. His grandfather’s grandfathers hang on the walls, so Judah clings there also. And yet he is outside. Judah has no use for him and pays him no more heed than he might a mosquito—noticing his, Andrew’s, presence possibly, and poised to slap and squash, and tracking Andrew’s progress from the corner of his eye, but not alarmed, not fretful, concentrating elsewhere, knowing if the insect drank its fill there’d still be blood to drink.
Andrew waits. He too can take his time. What he’s hearing is the wind, or maybe the furnace or some unfastened shutter on the second floor. Such seeming fixity in Judah is a form of weakness, since he does not notice how his adversaries prosper. Andrew notices. The opposition multiplies. He sues for Maggie’s hand as if her hand were Judah’s to bestow. He admits to his previous guilt. He should not have coveted his neighbor’s wife nor, having seen his child that time, have left without a word. And because of this admission perhaps (or weariness and travel and whiskey, the persistent hovering and ax-edge in his retina), they are not adversaries. Instead, and to Andrew’s relief, they are in league. He wishes Judah well. He wishes him rest and release. His vision fades. It smokes like the snuffed candles and goes dark.
“Are you all right?” Ian asks.
“Yes. A little tired.”
“Do you want coffee?”
“No. We should be going.”
“It’s early yet,” says Ian.
“We?” asks Maggie.
“Yes.”
She accepts the plural. Jane is asleep in her chair. “I can’t explain it,” Andrew says. “I think we should leave here tonight.”
“This isn’t house arrest,” says Ian.
“No.”
“You’re welcome to stay.” He smiles. “Lord knows, we’ve got the room. And if you’re tired, or worried about driving . . .”
“Oh, Ian”—Maggie turns to him—“won’t you be lonely without us?”
“Yes.”
“You could come too!”
Ian takes her in his arms. “I can’t.”
“You can. You could.”
“Not right away. Maybe later.”
“Soon?”
“Soon.”
“It can’t come soon enough,” she urges. “Do think about it. Please.”
From his vantage in the passageway, Andrew increases the light. The chandelier works on a rheostat; it hums. Ian seems calm. He breathes in the same rhythm as his sleeping sister, and his eyes also are closed. “I will,” says Ian. “Maybe.”
“Just let them build the road,” she says. “The hell with it, really.”
Jane mutters and moves in her sleep.
“We’ll hire a caretaker—someone to stay here. Someone to make sure the lightbulbs are working and the furnace stays on. You have better things to do . . .”
They disengage. They each retreat two paces. Maggie says, “So much that’s more important. Please.”
“Do I?”
“Of course. That play of yours . . .” Her voice is without assurance. It carries no conviction, as if she knows he’ll stay behind no matter how she pleads. “Custodian,” she says. “It’s just a fancy name for janitor.”
Jane wakes. She stretches, staring, blinking, and takes her mother’s hand. “It isn’t bedtime, is it?”
“Yes.”
“We’re going,” Andrew says.
“All right,” Ian says. “Keep in touch.”
Maggie precedes them. She walks through the ha
lls holding Jane. As though the Persian carpet were a tightrope to negotiate, her balance seems precarious; she teeters, unused to high heels. Andrew watches. He has trouble focusing; she shifts in his vision from youthful to old, with the ripe dessication of agelessness—what she was she will remain. Maggie is the woman he has gauged his manhood by for years; there are changes in the mirror, but not in his mind’s eye.
He has seen enough, however, to note clinical collapse. He reads the signals of depression like a contract, clause by clause. Her anger revives her—as it did with Ian some minutes ago—but without such anger or the habit of flirtation she goes blank. Her mouth appears dry; she licks it repeatedly. Her eyes have a wet glaze.
A change of scene will help, he hopes: somewhere less wintry with playmates for Jane. He pictures how next spring he’ll teach his daughter to swim. The pool at his house has a shallow end, and he’ll rope it off and spend hours with her till she learns to float. He can see himself bending above her, the sun on his back and his own trunks dry, he’ll keep her so close to the steps. Jane will have a life belt on, and water wings; Maggie will be drinking fruit juice or Schweppes in her chair. The chair is yellow plastic, and its headrest and footrest are white. In the early mornings he wipes it dry of dew. She will smile across at them, this father and daughter so essential to each other and to her.
He gives himself pleasure by giving them pleasure; indulging his daughter, he feels self-indulged. There will be birthday parties, paper hats and noisemakers and magicians and balloons. He’ll take her to the circus and The Nutcracker ballet and the Natural History Museum to see the dinosaurs. He’ll ply her with presents from FAO Schwarz, making up for these three years, making good for what he’d failed at earlier. It was not his fault, of course; he’ll try to explain that and justify his absence—but not until she asks. He will make the second bedroom in the farmhouse hers entirely; he’ll buy only washable quilts. And in Manhattan they’ll make room. It’s possible, he thinks, standing in the dark hallway with mother and daughter before him, adjusting shelves and beds and furniture in the den, buying a Castro Convertible to replace the window seat; it’s possible, they might just make it, might not have to move. But if there’s insufficient room they’ll find a larger place and settle down.
Andrew lights a cigarette. He has invented a future so much at odds with his own recent past that the present feels disjunct. How, for instance, should he introduce this family to Eloise, or explain them to her when she comes to claim her things? Her negligee is in his drawer, she would have worn it to welcome him back. Should he propose to Maggie and institute adoption proceedings or claim paternity for Jane? Should he wait till Maggie knows her mind or suggest intensive therapy or hospitalization; should they take a get-to-know-each-other trip? It has long been Andrew’s opinion that the acid test for marriage is a hotel room in winter in a strange town with the airport closed; if you can get through that, he’d say, you’ll get through fifty years. Make it in Omaha on Saturday or Tokyo without a hotel reservation, and you’ll make it together till death do you part.
Yet the surprising thing about all this is how little he’s surprised. It is as if he’s been preparing for just such a change—has known since his chill vigil by the Toy House three years previous that he would bring them south. They’d parted breezily enough the last time they’d met (a peck on his cheek, reaching up, tiptoe, a half-wave as she lowered her head, the staccato heels). But nothing was resolved; it was a parting with false closure that had assured his return. He’ll need an extra subscription to the opera series, and one for chamber music at Alice Tully Hall—but entertainment is his business, and there should be no problem. The Castro will fit, and the teddy bear Jane carries, and the trunks Ian promises to send: there is space on the shelves for Peter Rabbit and Big Bird and a Lite-Brite screen of Bozo the Clown she has finished except for the ears. He gathers these and stacks them in the vestibule.
It would have been so simple to pretend he had known nothing. He could say that Ian called one night and the next day he, Andrew, drove north. Then he claimed his daughter and took her to her rightful home and balanced the imbalance of their years apart. But Maggie had known otherwise; she knew that he’d known and done nothing those years. She could not know, of course, how he attempted to enter the Toy House and failed, how his first impulsive foray was repulsed by her seeming self-sufficiency when he saw her cradle the wrapped flesh of their shared engendering, back turned to him till he turned back.
The mother of your child, he tells himself; maybe Maggie’s trouble dates from his own past refusal to help. He doubts this, but doubt nags. Had he come to her rescue when she told him three years previous that she was in Vermont with a child of their devising, her sorry recent history need not have come to pass. Yet she’d asked for no such rescue; she seemed to want the opposite. Had he brought a ladder to her window in the turret, Maggie would wait with her hair hanging down till he reached to embrace her, then kick the thing free. He, Andrew, would have toppled, he can feel it in his back. He had not been needed then. He hopes Ian does not know how he delayed three years.
His car, outside, has a light sheet of snow. Andrew starts it without trouble, then switches off the motor and lets down the tailgate to pack. The sky seems a black road with ice slicks for stars. Ian turns on the light on the porch, and the brilliance fades. Shivering, wordless, they load the Volvo. Ian brings his mother’s suitcases to the car, and Andrew arranges them. The cold is absolute, and now his head is clear. He can smell and touch and taste cold weather everywhere; it extends from Lake Erie to Gander, and is unremitting. Jane is asleep again on the hall couch. “You’re sure?” asks Ian. “You’re very welcome to stay.”
Maggie answers for them. “If we’re going we should go.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.” Once more, however, she sounds uncertain. “Understand,” she says. “I love it here.” Maggie rests her fingertips against the waist-high wainscoting. She bends her head. “I’m frightened.”
“Of what?” Andrew asks.
She will not look at them. She runs her hand along the wall as if there are Braille markers there, and her future is embossed. “You don’t know how I love this place. Ian doesn’t. No one does.”
“We can come back,” Andrew says.
“Yes. But it’s having to leave it . . .”
“You don’t have to,” Ian says.
Maggie turns to answer him. She has lost all animation; her mouth works without sound.
Jane puts her arm across her face and grinds her teeth.
“You’re not being forced,” Andrew says.
“I’ll be a burden, Andrew.”
“Yes.”
“Ian can tell you . . .”
“He has.”
Maggie smiles. Her face is white; the smile cracks her profile like marble. It is without mirth. “Don’t think I’m not grateful,” she says. “I know how—how decent you’re being. Doing the proper thing, the honorable thing. But this is different . . .”
“Judah’s dead,” says Ian. His voice has Judah’s weight. “He didn’t burn the barn or burn his armor and his cattle. You can stop mourning him now.”
“And you?” She turns to him. “What about you?”
His face, too, is marmoreal. It has no color, seemingly. “I’ve done that,” Ian says.
“So what do we do? Just say it’s over; decide it’s finished?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I can’t. It’s not that easy. It used to be. That plaque on the Toy House. It’s not a National Landmark, Ian, not something in some register. It’s where Judah sat.”
“I know that,” Ian says. “You’ll come back sometime soon.”
“No.”
“When you’re ready. If you want to.”
Jane stirs in her sleep. Maggie shifts her attention. She turns to Andrew. “You poor man. You thought you’d just drop in on us. Now look what you’re getting.”
“Two women,” he says.
“My white knight. My prince on a princely green steed. You won’t regret it?”
“No.”
“You can change your mind,” she says. “That’s allowed.”
“I know.”
“Let’s go if we’re going,” she says.
Ian gathers Jane in his arms and carries her out to the car. He wears no coat, and his shirt is open. Jane sleeps where he settles her, on the soft leather seat and under a blanket; she holds her yellow blanket also, and her beanbag Snoopy. She does not wake up or respond when he kisses her good-bye; Maggie enters next. She sits beside her daughter, wearing a black cape. It has a black silk cowl. Andrew and Ian shake hands. “I’ve got something for you,” Ian says. “To tell me what to do with, when you get a chance.”
“What is it?” Andrew asks. He discovers a desire for Ian’s good opinion; the desire is acute.
“The Green Mantle,” Ian says. “My case in Judah’s court.” He smiles, half sheepish. “I hope it makes sense. It’s why I’m staying, anyhow. I’ll send it to you soon.”
They shake hands a second time. When Andrew starts the engine, the smoke from the muffler is thick; it billows underneath the porte cochere.
Ian brushes snow from the rear window. His hands are cold. The last thing that he sees, as Andrew eases into gear and the car tilts forward, is his mother’s staring face. She watches him, retreating, who stands immobile as they leave, who lifts his hand as she lifts hers. Her fingers fall. She says something at the window that he fails to hear. The cold increases. He has caged her for her freedom’s sake; he has trapped this animal in order to release it. She sees him. She kisses the air.
AFTERWORD
I was born in England, of parents born in Germany, with an Italian name. It’s a not uncommon story in this nation full of immigrants; mobility seems less the exception than rule. People move. We came to America when I was six; I have remained here since.
In my youth and young manhood, however, I traveled a good deal. The places my fictive family’s scion, Ian Sherbrooke, visits—Iran, Afghanistan, Nepal—were stamped in my passport as well. My early books convey a wanderer’s delight in distance; the first novel took place in Greece, the second more or less everywhere/nowhere, and the novel that preceded the Sherbrooke trilogy was set in the south of France.
Sherbrookes: Possession / Sherbrookes / Stillness (American Literature Series) Page 62
