Collected Novels and Plays

by James Merrill

  Reborn, nearly dry, padding back through the house, he heard a phone ring, then silence. An amber light filled up the ocean room. “Oh Natalie!” called Prudence from somewhere else. “Mrs. McBride! Has anyone see Francis?”

  “Here I am!”

  “It’s the telephone, dear! Take it in the hall closet if you like! How was New York!”

  “The absolute end!” Francis called back, then switched on the light in a crowded, irregularly shaped coat-closet near the front door. “Yes?” he said into the receiver.

  It was Xenia. He winced with remorse.

  “I hope I’m not disturbing you,” she said. “I haven’t heard from you all week.”

  “Oh my, has a week passed?”

  “It’s so hot in town. What have you been doing out there?”

  “Reading. Nothing. You know.”

  “How is Ben? And Prudence?”

  “Fine. My mother’s here.”

  “What a bore.”

  “On the contrary. How’s the little stranger?”

  “Sucking me to bits like an old lecher. He has big blue eyes like you. The doctor’s very pleased.”

  Francis had brown eyes, but let it pass.

  “He wants to say hello to you,” she continued. “Viens, mon trésor, dis gentiment bonjour.”

  A tiny noise, half cry, half gurgle, reached Francis. “Allè, bébé,” he answered softly. He had let the closet door swing to, shutting him inside among the odds and ends.

  “Have you told your father yet?”

  He had, but said he hadn’t, wondering why.

  “You don’t want to wait for the Buchanans to tell him.” Xenia saw herself eternally under discussion at the Cottage.

  “Look,” said Francis, “if it’s so hot why don’t you get an air-conditioner? Just send me the bill.”

  “You’re an angel! That’s exactly—what? One moment.” He heard some muffled speech. “Hello,” said Xenia. “Tommy’s written a folk song he says you must hear. When are you coming to town?”

  “One of these days. Are you married?”

  “God forbid!” she laughed. It had come to be a joke between them. “Oh, and I wanted to ask,” she went on, “did you mean what you said about getting us all a cottage for August?”

  “Of course.”

  “Because Adrienne knows of a place on the Cape, very cheap. It sounds perfect. Five bedrooms for four hundred dollars.”

  “I’ll send you a check.”

  “You’ll come up and stay, won’t you?”

  “If there’s room.”

  “Dear Francis,” said Xenia, “there’ll always be room for you.”

  Sliding down onto a low wicker stool, he hugged his knees. Above him hung all his father’s coats, most of them too big now for the old man, never worn but kept hanging there like flags in an attic. As he put down the receiver, Francis lifted his face into the folds of one. It felt cool and opulent and smelled of mothballs. He had no thought of leaving the closet. “I’m here!” he whispered. On the floor, golf-shoes, probably older than himself, bade fair to outlast Benjamin. “I’m here!” Something gleamed back at him from the shadow of the furthest corner. Bending double, Francis identified his father’s head, in bronze, face to the wall.

  He smiled from ear to ear. Really, what good was art, or being a patron? It boiled down to this—all representation failed. If he hadn’t just heard differently from Lily, he could have imagined Enid’s portrait stabbing itself, desperate over such a truth.

  Meno, too, had talked of patrons—spirits wise and loving, now beyond all reach. Francis supposed it was for the best. Here on earth it hadn’t been wisdom that guided Lily in her emblematic gesture, instead of the other kind, the kind whose meaning couldn’t be undone. Francis himself had only lately arrived at this comprehension. As for love, here on earth it was a different kettle of fish.

  He suspected frankly that he hadn’t fathered Xenia’s child. True, nine months and a week after his night with her, a son had been born, a frail, purple-faced thing, weighing not quite four pounds. Tommy Utter wouldn’t leave the hospital. The infant spent its first days between life and death. It occurred to Francis, though nobody volunteered the fact, that the child had been prematurely born. If so, it could easily have been conceived during the early weeks of Xenia’s affair with the young musician. Francis amazed himself by the skill with which he didn’t draw conclusions. Never bothering to express his doubts, he planned to do everything he could for the child. The other day, when he told Benjamin, the old man had seemed very pleased. He spoke of putting money in the baby’s name (Alexey, after Xenia’s father). Francis didn’t know when, if ever, he would tell Vinnie.

  And yet, and yet—it was exhausting never to know the truth. Hearing a car-door slam, and then his father’s voice outside, Francis smiled. How good to be away from Xenia, mirrors, cities, words that a teacup spelled out, pale allusions, equivalents to the actual. Summer had come and he had arrived at a place in which for a while he couldn’t be plagued by images for things. Nobody knew what to do with them here. They were relegated to stuffy closets, left facing into corners, gathering dust. He was having trouble breathing, himself. Flinging open the closet door, he met Benjamin in the hall.

  “Hello, Grandpa,” he said.

  “Hello, Francis,” said the old man, and kissed him. “I’m glad you’re back.” He was wearing a fez, which he handed to his son, calling, “Prudence!”

  “One moment.” With the corner of his towel Francis rubbed his father’s neck. “Fern left some lipstick,” he said, deadpan.

  Benjamin laughed and shook his head. “God damn,” he said, starting for his wife’s room and calling her name as he went.

  23. The next morning, clear and rare, things were humming throughout the Cottage. Before leaving to pick up Vinnie at the Inn, Francis strolled over for a short tour of inspection. Starting with the basement, he watched Loretta mix icing for three enormous cakes. On the counter behind her, thirty-six chicken breasts—capons, really—waited to be dredged with flour and fried in fat already heating on the stove. A drop of perspiration fell from her chin into the icing, to which she then added drops of red coloring. “Pink, that’s for young men,” she explained, and gave way to a fit of laugher. Upstairs in the pantry, he found Prudence, looking hectic. She had never seen so many roses, she was telling Louis Leroy and a maid. Yes, they would need the silver vases. Where were the shears? She turned one of the vases round and said in the pleasantest possible way that they’d have to be polished more carefully. And at once, please. It wouldn’t do for even a fragment of tarnish to show. Which reminded her, the piano keys looked very grubby. They wanted to be gone over with a clean rag dipped in benzine, then carefully wiped. She took a handkerchief to her throat, by way of illustration. Oh, and had Mrs. Bigelow’s things been moved yet to the guest-cottage?

  Francis laughed. Was Natalie being thrown out again?

  “It’s Benjamin’s notion.” Prudence turned, her eyes rolling upward. She kissed him distractedly. “Some people are coming, whom he insists take that room. A name I’ve never heard, and don’t want to think about—A Mr. Dirty and his wife. Wally Link’s coming too. And the Feuermans. And the Maxons. And Mrs. McBride’s daughter. And twenty children after lunch. I’m thinking only of the strain on Benjamin. Louis, go ask Mrs. McBride for one of her headache pills. Thank you. You see, Francis, this luncheon is my first test—do you think I shall pass it?” She counted the roses she had trimmed, found one stem snapped almost at the blossom, and gave it to him for his buttonhole. “What a jolly evening we had, just the four of us. You mother is so attractive. Of course, I’ve know so few Southern women, it’s not easy to get their quality on a first meeting.”

  “You’d met her before, though, in Boston.”

  “Absolutely! Now where is Louis? I may just not go to church.”

  Francis sauntered out. Tables were being laid on the terrace overlooking the sea. No whitecaps broke that suave blue surface. From t
ime to time a slow undulation would sparkle shorewards, perform a somersault, and quietly, without shattering, overtake a stretch of dry beach. For any clue to the power of that water you had to have felt the undertow sucking at your calves. Francis looked down upon it. He had put on a new white suit, a shirt of yellow muslin, and a blood-red bow tie.

  “Is that the way you ordinarily dress out here?” asked Vinnie as he helped her into the car.

  “When I do dress.”

  She didn’t laugh. “Don’t wear that rose. Will you do me that one favor, Son?”

  Francis removed it from his buttonhole, sniffed it, and handed it to her. She tossed it into the road. Her tone had changed little since their parting talk the night before. The evening itself, as Prudence said, had been jolly. It was distinctly a family affair, with Natalie neither seen nor mentioned. Mrs. McBride, whom Vinnie kissed on entering, ate off a tray in her room. Before dinner the Buchanans looked in for a bit of drinking and hand-holding. Enid had a Roman scarf to give the visitor. For Francis it was an evening full of mysterious pleasure and significance; indeed, he had spent the better part of it in silence, watching his parents and foolishly smiling. The pleasure was not to be rationalized. He thought of great works of painting, and wondered if his emotion couldn’t be compared to the artist’s who sees his labor justified, his vision realized—in this case by some rich candlelit interior, with gifts, flashing looks and feasting, a subject almost Biblical: The Prodigal Mother—what else? She, the central figure, chatted easily of this and that. Her hand, still with its engagement and wedding rings, rested for emphasis now on Prudence’s arm, now on Benjamin’s. Once or twice Francis could have wished for a less natural flow of talk, a phrase broken off, a hesitation as to the point of an anecdote, something by which to measure the depth of her feeling, back in that house, at that gleaming table, smiled on by servant and master alike. For a moment, after dinner, she came close. “This room,” began Vinnie, then sipped her coffee while Francis felt the ocean room come alive with meaning for her, “this room has never looked smarter. It’s big enough to take red.” “Oh dear,” said Prudence, “you must save your compliment for Enid. I can’t tell chintz from cheesecloth.” “You’d better learn damn quick,” Benjamin told her, “if you want to keep your job. My own opinion,” he went on after a spell of heckling from his wives, “is that the damn room was never pleasant to be in. It’s too pretentious. I like a simple room.” Vinnie said then, “Just think, my dear, how few of us get what we like out of life.” And she nodded shrewdly.

  Her remark, though banal, had been just. Like many rich men Benjamin tended to look back on his life and grow wistful over how poor he had been, in the same way that shabby-genteel families recalled a vanished wealth. It was Vinnie’s air of knowing better that troubled Francis. He saw no reason for her to play the philosopher in the barrel, one withered hand upturned in deprecation of a monarch’s power. All was forgiven, forgotten; she’d been saying so for years now. Then why couldn’t she give in to the charm of the reunion?

  As they entered the church a bald vestryman came up, remembered Vinnie, chatted awhile, and led them to a pew. It was a modest building, Victorian, drab, which had gathered chic over the years. People had had to stand in the aisles during Enid’s wedding. Vinnie knelt at once, her hands clasped, her lips moving. She was wearing a dress Francis recognized, gray, but with cherries at the throat where there had once been roses. Slowly the church filled up. Boopsie Gresham took a seat not far in front of them. When she saw who Francis had with him she gasped, waved, blew kisses. Vinnie smiled pleasantly in return. Oh, she was a hard nut to crack!

  Last night, stopping at the entrance of the Inn, he had been about to help her from the car when she said, “Wait.” Her eyes were wide and tragic. “Why are you putting me through this?”

  His heart sank. “Through what?”

  “Through this experience. Do you imagine, Son, that there’s any place for me here? Don’t pin your hopes on that, Francis, it’s utterly out of the question.”

  Her vehemence surprised him. Pure nerves, he decided, a sign of healing like the itching of a wound. Still, she had put her finger on something he’d never bothered to think out.

  “I’m here because you asked me to come. I’m not a sport and I’ve no interest in being one. I’m doing this for you.” Her voice went mild and uncertain. “It seemed like little enough.”

  “Oh God, oh God,” Francis murmured. All round him he felt a conspiracy of solicitous women. His idea had been to do something for her.

  “Now don’t you start,” she said, squeezing his hand. He gathered that Vinnie supposed him about to cry, which he saw no need for. His mistake amounted to having assumed that a single exposure to the scene would do the trick. “Don’t worry about tomorrow,” she finished bravely. “I’ll face them all, I won’t let you down.”

  As the organ swelled, she rose, facing them all. Francis held the hymnal under her eyes, but the words—“Rock of Ages”—were written in her heart. A hard nut to crack; he wouldn’t give up, though, he simply wouldn’t. After all, Fern had come round. Women, as Benjamin said, could never resist attention—or was it Benjamin himself they couldn’t resist? Another summer, if not this one, would find Vinnie installed nearby, in a rented cottage, what the society columns called “a familiar sight at the Beach Club.” That winter they might give the West Indies another try. Francis would see to it she didn’t get sick before reaching Jamaica. A sidelong glance at her, earnestly singing, filled him with happiness. No, despite her efforts, Vinnie was coming alive. She couldn’t hold out much longer.

  Halfway through the service she whispered, “Who is that stout pink-faced woman next to Ben?”

  “Don’t you know? That’s Harriet. The first Mrs. Tanning.”

  “Oh.”

  Later, while the church emptied, the christening party moved into the front pews. The organ’s mind wandered. “No,” said Vinnie, “let’s just stay put. Or you move up if you want.” But Mrs. Gresham turned round and beckoned with such authority, they ended by joining her. The two old friends kissed. “Vinnie, Vinnie, Vinnie!” she exulted. “Did I ever dream I’d see you here! It’s been a long time, darling, much too long! You out for the summer? No? Now why not? Where else is there to go? All the resorts are ruined. Look at Southampton. I say we’re in Heaven’s back yard, by comparison. You remember Nell Sturdevant. It’s Vinnie Tanning, Nell!”

  “Vinnie, angel! Hi there, Francis! You’re getting fat!”

  “So are you, Nell—isn’t it fun!”

  “Hi, Nelly!” said a familiar voice directly over Francis’s head. He twisted and saw a jeweled tennis racket dangling at eye level. Automatically he started to rise, then realized that Irene was gazing coolly past him and had no intention of speaking. Charlie lingered in the aisle, a certain distance behind her. Now there was somebody who’d really gotten fat.

  “How are you, Irene?” said Mrs. Sturdevant without smiling, ostentatiously loyal to Benjamin.

  But Boopsie, who was loyal to everybody, had her reputation to protect. “You cute thing!” she cried. Francis and his mother leaned forward to let her hold Irene’s hand. “When’d you get back? You look divine! Come see me!”

  His head bowed, Francis considered Irene’s foot. A blue vein throbbed against the cutting braid of straw that fastened her sandal. It was a distinctly human foot, he thought, a mortal foot, neglected, down-to-earth, one painted toenail peeling. It told a simple story of scars and calluses, one he would never have been able to read in Irene’s face. Francis felt wiser and warmer for his glimpse of it.

  Tied to the church door, her beagles whined in anticipation.

  “You’re not leaving!” Boopsie was saying. “Stay for the christening! It’s Enid’s child!”

  “I know,” said Irene in a voice that carried. “That’s why we’re running along. Charlie Cheek and I’ve stood about all we can from the Tanning family.” Francis looked up in time to see her small eyes, narrowed, ran
ge from pew to pew. She dared anybody to say she didn’t belong there. Benjamin, catching sight of her, nodded gravely, mischievously. It had been wise of Prudence to stay at home. “This is so pathetic, so familiar,” sighed Vinnie. But by then Irene had pivoted and, with a toss of her head that impressed no one, was marching Charlie Cheek up the aisle, as if marrying the poor man all over again.

  The ceremony got under way. Grouped round the font, Enid, Larry, the godparents (Lily among them), and the baby itself were reminded that the soul cannot die. “Dost thou, therefore, in the name of this Child,” asked the rector, a fine amateur athlete, “renounce the devil and all his works, the vain pomp and glory of the world …?”

  Smiling, they did so. The baby shook its fists in delight or protest.

  Outside the church, professional photographers snapped pictures. Vinnie didn’t want to be in any of the groups, but Francis overrode her objections. After all, little Tanning Burr was the center of every shot. Now in Enid’s arms, now in Lily’s, now in the arms of the new nurse, Alice’s successor, the baby smiled beautifully, trustingly. A far cry, Francis thought, from Xenia’s little monkey, who any day now would have to start living by his wits, while his mother lived by hers. A picture taken just then caught Francis with a comic, dazed expression on his face. He had been thinking that, when all was said and done, a real advantage went with being born where there was security and love. Although he had been told so all his life, it had never before struck him without irony.

  People came up to Vinnie, whom Francis held firmly by the arm. He felt her stiffen under Wally Link’s kiss. Once, unaccountably, they met head-on Enid and her mother. Introductions were sketched in. Both Mrs. Tannings laughed airily without saying very much. The moment passed. To Francis’s surprise Vinnie kept on smiling. “At least somebody else is in the same boat,” she whispered.