MacDonald gives Mary a rueful look, sipping his tea and waiting for Captain Harrison to finish talking.
—The Home Island, he says. I haven’t heard it called that in a while.
—Yes, well. I’ll be glad when my services are rendered, and I no longer have to make the voyage down here. I’m not ashamed to confess that I’ve reached the end of my tolerance for it all. What I wouldn’t give for an English winter.
Later, as they are taking leave, MacDonald gives Mary a piece of paper with an address on it.
—This is where you will find my lady, he says. I trust that you will be great friends.
—I already feel your trust is not misplaced.
He stands back and appears to rock on his heels, a gesture of gladness in her, almost like a swagger.
—I feel I have made a wonderful new friend.
—Well, Mary says, that speaks of a generous spirit.
She and Captain Harrison stride down the wet street, past lantern-burning windows, and she looks back once to the entrance of the courtyard, where MacDonald stands watching. He waves, and she waves back.
—Good man, says Captain Harrison. I have always liked him.
—Yes, Mary says, deciding to ignore the tone of condescension in his voice, as if his imprimatur is necessary for her to form any opinion. But perhaps she’s being too hard on him. In truth, there is an aspect to certain English attitudes about Africa that angers her; she sees so much of it now from the point of view of the Africans. She cannot help this, nor does she wish to help it. She embraces it.
Gazing out at the drifting coastline of the strange and mysterious and beautiful continent, retracing the exotic cities and ports north, she begins to plan how she will accomplish the task of convincing the museum, or Guillemard, whoever can supply her with means, that she must return, must come back to this wild coast and go deeper, deeper in.
7
There is a story that you drove a leopard away from the centipede villa, in the middle of a night when you had, for some brief period of surcease from the vigils over the sick, fallen asleep. You threw a gourd full of limewater at it and scared it off. This sort of thing happened all the time, apparently, and you just went about doing what you set out to do, and you seem in your writings to be paying no particular attention to the astounding nature of such behavior. The almost offhand way you report these things, the humor you seem to have no trouble finding in them, leaves me cold, quite frankly. I don’t suppose there is anything else you could have done, and you were probably very uneasy telling these heroics on yourself, and so by default, your attitude must tend to shrug it all off. It leaves such a hard example for me, though. I can’t find the bravery you had in such unfair abundance. And it is only when I have the time to reflect that you are controlling your fear, that there is no true bravery without fear—it is only when I think of this that I can come back to my fascination and love of you, for what you did. For everything you did—even, in some strange, endearing way, your mistakes.
I wonder what you would make of this play I’m trying to construct out of your life. Such a brief life, and yet you crowded so much into those last seven years. And in fact, when one considers the long process of your self-education, it becomes obvious enough that you crowded a lot of a kind of living into the whole thirty-seven.
The raw spring rains gave way to a burning sun, and humidity. Tyler bought a window air conditioner, and began again, gingerly, to agitate for a trip north. He brought it up like teasing, and Lily teased back. They had received no more letters from New Orleans, and Doris called almost every day, wanting to know how they were doing. Lily could answer with some truthfulness that they were doing fine. When Nick and Sheri came to visit, or Lily and Tyler went to visit them, there was always so much unspoken between them that Lily felt it as tension: apart from what she knew about the marriage from Sheri, there was the fact of the shared nightmare the two men had been through. And then, too, Tyler and Nick saw each other all day at the dealership. They would talk about the day’s work, and then grow quiet, and they would begin to seem faintly restive, though Nick was unfailingly kind to Lily, and attentive to the baby. The visits grew farther and farther apart. Sheri and Millicent still stopped by in the days, frequently just as Lily had gotten the baby to sleep and was planning a nap. But she was always happy to see them. Withal, several days could pass in which Lily would feel almost comfortable, nearly content, in the middle of things with her baby and her work, and with the people who filled her life. Then, without warning, the waking in the nights would come, the sense of a sort of primal violation: a badness, a shadow that haunted her.
There had been no more pathological scenes with Tyler, and mostly the tensions that arose were allowed to dissipate reasonably. They were considerate of each other, and they could take pleasure in the baby’s fast-developing personality: certain things brought a lovely, open, half-moon-eyed smile to the little round face, and on occasion her bright voice would come forth, a trill that charmed them both. They had exquisite moments watching the child.
Their lovemaking had begun again; it was quiet, and rather surprisingly tender. The first time, Lily initiated it. They were sitting on the couch, reading in the quiet, with the baby asleep between them. She reached over and touched his wrist. “I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you, too.”
She waited.
“Do you think we could?”
She took him by the hand and led him into the bedroom. He was tentative, and very careful of her, and she discovered that she could forget herself, and take pleasure in him. Afterward, they lay in each other’s arms.
He sighed. “I have such regrets.”
“Don’t,” she said.
“I mean in the way I’ve treated you through this.”
“Let’s not talk about it. Not now.”
“I think I’ve lost my sense of timing.”
They were quiet for a few moments. And he sighed again.
“Tyler, don’t.”
“No, I was thinking about work.”
“Well, don’t.”
“You’re right.” He leaned up on one elbow to look at her. “I think you’re such a beautiful woman.” The words sounded wrong, in that tone—it was almost forlorn. He shook his head. “I haven’t deserved you.”
She pulled him down to kiss her.
This time, things went less well. His movements hurt her a little, and she held tight to him, feeling the straining in his back and sides. She had a moment of being too conscious of him as separate from her, and then she worked to make this an aspect of the gratification of him there in the bed with her. This time it was purely sex, and she knew it and felt guilty for it as he pulled out of her and lay over on his back, sighing, not with regret, but with satiation. “That was good,” he murmured.
“Yes.”
“You know,” he said, “the odd thing is that I didn’t really miss it after Mary came. Those first weeks I don’t think I even thought of it. And when we were—weren’t getting along, it didn’t enter my mind. I mean, I couldn’t think of you that way. It’s only been in the last few weeks that I’ve thought of it and I wondered if you were, too.”
“I was,” Lily said.
He kissed her and she smiled into his kiss.
“I hate it when we’re not getting along,” he said.
She nodded, and was at a loss for something else to tell him. The truth was that there was only one reason they had fought, and that reason, for all the adjustments and careful gestures toward affection and companionship, had not gone away. She wondered if he really supposed the problem was solved, or lived past, behind them. Yes. His behavior showed it: he believed, or at least he wanted to behave as if, they had reached life on the other side of the trouble. And she knew that when she brought it up again, if she did so, the trouble would begin all over again.
“Tell me how things’re going with the play,” he said.
“Oh, right now I’m only studying. Not writ
ing much. Well, not as much as I’d like. It’s going all right, though.”
He said, “Well, how’s the studying coming along?”
“I’ve got this problem—you know. This baby.”
“Mary, a problem?”
She knew he wished to tease with her, hoped to be lighthearted as they had just come close to being. She couldn’t muster the feeling. It felt wrong, like a lie they might tell each other. When the baby stirred in the other room, she was relieved, and hoped he hadn’t perceived it. But Tyler was not dense, and he spent the rest of that evening off to himself, turning the pages of his books.
8
TYLER DECIDED that he wanted to go to Europe in the fall, sometime after Millicent’s wedding. He’d started saving money for it, he said. They might live in Italy for a few years. Rome. Why not? Lily could use it for her writing. Mary could learn to speak two languages, growing up. He hadn’t spoken about the army at all in the past weeks, and while the new plan was disconcerting, it was nevertheless something he brought home with him, that he discussed openly with her. Over these months with the baby, watching her go through the small increments of growth, Lily had come to realize how much she was fitted to this task, and how rewarding it was for her. She liked being needed so completely, though she believed the feeling was probably common to the state of having a child. But there was something else, too, something quite physical, including the faintly sour odor of the baby’s breath near her face in the nights, when the child lay at her side to nurse. Tyler, sleeping soundly on the other side of the bed—oblivious to this pleasure she received, and separated from it, too—seemed obscurely peripheral, for all his efforts to involve himself.
He had taken charge of the four o’clock feedings, using formula that the pediatrician had suggested to them. He was working so hard. At the dealership, Nick and he seemed to have formed a zone of comfort between them, though there were nights when Tyler appeared rather sorrowfully tense, and would mutter that work was on his mind whenever he caught her watching him. She understood that the longer the truth of Mary’s paternity was kept from the others, the harder things would be when the time came to reveal it. And it would have to be revealed sooner or later. Yet she couldn’t find the way to broach the subject. It was something the two of them avoided with all the self-consciousness of a person trying to keep from noticing a scar, or a bad lisp.
He came home with talk about Rome. He had picked up some brochures at a travel agency, and he brought some books from the library.
She was surprised by how much the idea appealed to her.
The little milestones came and went through the days: Mary rolled over on her own; she lifted her head and came to a wobbly all fours; she ate rice cereal and strained peaches, Lily spooning it carefully into her mouth and catching it as it came back out and down the dimpled chin. Tyler helped with this, a long and patient operation, getting the little jar of strained food down. The mess was comical. They had it all over them, and Tyler washed the high chair they had put her in, a beatific smile on his face. Lily noted this as she nursed Mary, and some of what the child had gotten on her mouth was on Lily’s nipple. The little mouth worked so perfectly. Tyler came and watched, and when he said how miraculous it all was, his voice faltered. In the mornings, now, they listened to the child’s babblings and lip sounds, a form of singing.
Lily kept her forebodings to herself.
Sometimes, it was all like a game they were involved in, a pretend game that children might play. The unreality of it was never far from her thoughts.
9
May 6, 1990
Dear ones,
Just wondering how you-all are. The spring by the water here has been a soaked affair. You pour yourself a glass of anything cold and the glass drips on you, forms a puddle around itself on the table. I’ve never seen such humidity, and the air conditioner Aunt Violet has only cools a little radius around it. So we three sit there in the evenings and several times we have sat in chairs sleeping there, too. At night I lay a sheet and pillows on the cool wooden floor between the upstairs rooms—Aunt Violet’s and ours—and sleep there, for the little cross breeze. And it’s only May, for God’s sake.
Manny’s working as a short-order cook in one of the joints in the Quarter. Nothing fancy. He makes eggs and bacon and hamburgers, that sort of thing. Turkey melts. It’s a chain, and stuck right in the middle of these world-class establishments. You wouldn’t think it could survive, but they are constantly busy and Manny comes home exhausted, discouraged, and in a bad mood, though he’s mostly pretty cool with it. It’s a job, and it helps pay the bills. When he’s down, Mrs. Beaumont and I are understanding, but then it’s been so hot in the days that sometimes we’re not in all that much of a good mood either. I’m still working in the bookstore. We don’t have a lot of time to socialize, though we do a little. I see some people I met in a writing group I joined, and they are all fine people, and they treat me wonderfully. But I don’t really confide in any of them, the way you and I used to, Lily, when we were students and so sure of everything. I’m still a little at sea, I guess. I’m beginning to wonder if I like it here.
I like Aunt Violet. I still end up calling her Mrs. Beaumont to her face, of course. My Southern upbringing. She keeps telling me to call her Violet. And she can say it so coquettishly, you’d swear she was flirting with me. Even knowing what I am. And, for that matter, what she is.
Does it sound strange, having it all said out that way? Even as a joke? It looks odd on paper, I admit.
Aunt Violet has a thing she says to us, every morning when we leave for work: “Widen the province of love, boys.” I know that that’s at the level of an over-the-top homily, but it sends us off with a kind of exuberance. It does. We’ve talked about it. There’s something settling and consoling about it. “Widen the province of love.”
She lives it.
She heads out each morning to visit her friends in the nursing homes of the area. She’s got so many; she’s gone all day. And she talks sadly about how they’re dying off. She says she’s older than everybody she knows, now. Manny gets so tired of his job that he hints about wanting to go back north, and she becomes frightened. You can see it in her face. She doesn’t want us to leave her here, says she’s gotten used to us, but of course it’s more than just being used to us. She clings to us both, really, without quite coming out with it. She’s so solicitous of us and so full of stories—there’s something a little frenetic about it, as if she’s afraid to let a pause become silence, terrified of the space of quiet where one of us might decide to leave, and say so. It’s actually as though she’s afraid of the words, like words have the power to affect temporal reality: say it, and it becomes so, no matter how impossible or unlikely.
This last week we had a real scare with her. She walked downstairs about an hour after going up to bed and didn’t know either of us, kept calling us by the name of some boy she knew long ago, when she was a little girl. This boy went off and died in the First World War, Manny said. We got her into her silk robe and took her in her truck to the emergency room of Saint Thomas Hospital. She sat there in that white light looking so forlorn and lost and sad. It made me shake. It scared me farther down than I have ever been scared. Like cold, bony ghost fingers on my spine and clutching at the pit of my stomach.
The doctors came and looked her over and talked to her. By this time she’d recovered some—she could recognize Manny, and after a little while, me. They said her blood pressure was a little high, but nothing unusual for someone her age. Her heart rate was good, all her vital signs were in the normal range. The doctor said it could have been a cerebral episode, a little stroke, such as happens often in the elderly. He said he would prescribe some blood thinner, but the side effects might be worse than the cure with someone so old. She seemed fine, by then, and he said it was probably best just to keep an eye on her for a time, and let her go on with her life, which has obviously been so rich and long, and she was clearly so fortunate to have tw
o young men like Manny and me to care for her. We took her home and all of us sat in the little column of cold from the window air conditioner and talked. She told us about living in Ireland until the age of nine, and then coming to the United States. Of meeting the boy who went off and died in France, in 1914, before America was even involved in the war. She was sixteen years old when she waved good-bye to him, and she had thought she was desperately-and-for-all-her-life in love. She told us she’s still in love with him, in her way, and she’s never found another man who interested her like that. There have been many female friends, she said, and smiled that smile. But she wished she could have had children. She kept her connection to so many of her students, but a lot of them are gone, now, too—and the many others seldom write or get in touch. She has let some of them go, and blames herself for not keeping up. And as she was going on about all this, she began talking about finding some way to start over with everything. She told us this, crying, and it wasn’t sad crying, either, it was scared crying. Panicked crying. But then, very slowly, she calmed down, and her natural cheer came back. Her very large appetite for life. Do you believe—she wanted to go out into the Quarter and get some gumbo. It became a thing, like a quest. She had a craving, at almost five o’clock in the morning, to get some gumbo and pie, and whiskey, and to listen to some jazz. I watched her all that night, and still felt my own fear, even as she seemed to get back to normal. She was still riding over what she’s riding over and the fact that she was being brave didn’t take away the dark, even a little.
I envy you and Tyler, having Mary. I have lately become so terrified of being alone. Manny is fine, and Aunt Violet just seems to go on, and still I have this horror that it can’t continue much longer, and I think of you two, and every other friend I have, as if you are all beacons in my dark. Forgive this. I might not even send it. It’s just that I haven’t heard from you and I wonder if something I said or did has alienated you both.
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