by Sonia Taitz
“Tell me about your ‘real’ father.”
“Oh,” Peter sighed, and was silent for a moment.
“He’s wonderful, really. He gambles, he travels. He’s naughty.”
“So he’s the fop you take after,” Lily teased.
“What do you mean?” Peter snapped. “I don’t have to take after bloody anyone.”
“Well, do you look like him?” Another mistake. She saw that Peter was deeply unhappy about his looks.
“I told you Julian looks like him, didn’t I? And I don’t look like Julian, now, do I?” He paused, and sighed again. “No. He has dark hair and a smashing black moustache. Tremendous teeth, bright white, and thick eyelashes. Dad’s a stew-eater, a heavy drinker, a creature of excess. You heard what Shelagh Eveline Fanning said about taming the furies, didn’t you?”
“I must have been out of the room.”
“Well. Artists do it. He can. He was an incredible actor at Oxford. He knew Shelagh Eveline Fanning when she was merely Shelagh Nobody. They ran neck and neck, if you know what I mean. He runs an acting school in Cannes now. Screws all the girls. They consider it an honor. It is.”
“I’m very fond of dark men.” This was the way to talk to Peter, as though people came in flavors. Bittersweet chocolate treats.
“You are, are you? Very typical. Even Mum was seduced, and she’s frigid, you know. She had to divorce Dad; he was having his way with her too often. Smearing her lipstick. And he hated her horses, you know. Hated all the shitty paraphernalia. What my Dad loves, really adores,” Peter’s face seemed to imitate a more predatory relish than his own, “is seediness, tiptoeing into the boudoir, chuck under the chin, stolen kisses followed by savage fucks, that sort of thing. He’s a do-it-your-selfer, a trellis-climber. You should see him in Hyde Park, wrapped in a blanket, eyeing the girls with that hard stare of his. They eye him too . . . .”
The hand that had been playing with his hair was now still, lost in a tangle.
“I look like Mum,” he continued. “She’s the one with no visible eyelashes, like a pig. But it looks right on her; she looks like someone singed them off, martyring her. And the weariest expressions: ‘How you bruise me, Peter. How you wound me, Julian.’ Like that. I suppose that’s what attracted the pious Archibald to her, although what attracted her to Archibald I cannot say.”
“Maybe she was tired of Hyde Park and mustaches. Maybe she wanted a real home, be it ever so homely.” Lily sometimes, not often, thought this way.
“Homely is what she got, Lily. Archibald is sadly Dad’s opposite. Convex belly to concave. Poor little Timothy will never know what it is to be madly in love with his sire. Little does he know that Peter and the Wolf is just the beginning of his burgher’s existence. Now he’s apparently imitating a piccolo all day. Then his voice will change, and he’ll be an old bassoon like Archibald, pasting labels on his record collection. Clearing his throat when he has nothing to say. Wiping his glasses whenever he disagrees with anyone. They both make me truly sick.”
“Timothy can’t be blamed, Peter. I mean, he’s just a little boy!”
“You’re such a dope. I, for one, do not find the qualities of fetal life to be inherently endearing.”
“Peter?”
“Yes, fish-face?”
You don’t really hate your little brother, do you? You’re lucky to have a little brother! I only wish I had any brother at all. It really does seem kind of medieval—”
“Try byzantine. Byzantine’s the big word, lately.”
“—to hate your little brother, and call him a ‘half-breed’—”
“Well, sometimes, I call him ‘The Usurper,’ actually. Now, Julian and I will have to split our estate three ways.”
“Oh, be quiet.”
“Now, would you like to hear about the birth of this innocent child?”
“O.K.”
“I’ll tell you all about it, and you’d better not repeat a word I say. When Mum had Timothy, she had a difficult time of it. She was in hospital for a long time afterward. They thought she’d die, you see, delivering him. He’s big and fat, you see, like Archibald. And she’s frail.”
Peter’s gaze hung for a moment out of the window, in the direction of the willows that they could hear but not see, as though searching for diversion in the world beyond his thoughts.
“One of the doctors knocked out some front teeth, jamming in a tube to save her. She was still puffy and yellow when we finally saw her, Archibald, Julian and I.
“Do you know what Archibald said to my mother then?”
“Oh, Peter, I’m sure—” His chin was wobbling.
“Archibald said—Archibald said—‘Helena, I can hardly believe that I married you, the way you are looking today.’ For a minute, we all just waited for Mum to say something. She had closed her eyes in the middle of his sentence. I thought it might be the medicine, or the exhaustion, but then all of a sudden she opened them up, wide, and cried out: ‘Oh, please! Archibald! Please!’
“He calmly said that he’d overlook her failings, as she’d delivered a son and heir, the pompous ass, ‘an heir.’ And she took his greasy, swollen fingers and kissed them gratefully. She looked up at him, helpless, with a sincere gratitude. She knows that her feelings for him will never change: she never loved him, and never will; she just needs him and was relieved that he wouldn’t start veering off course, the way Dad did. Any movement away would have crushed her. She wanted to know that things would stay put. That she could stay put.”
After a few minutes, Peter decided that he was starving, so Lily retrieved her tangerine from her sock, much to his tired amusement. She sectioned it, arranging it nicely on a plate with some plain chocolate biscuits. Peter rallied, commenting that orange and brown went together smartly, “Which is funny, you know, fish-face, because brown is so moo-cow tame, and orange, as the great Huysmans says, unnerves the jaded senses.” Lily said that she couldn’t agree more, and helped Peter dispose of the strange combination.
6
LATER, JUST BEFORE SHE FELL ASLEEP, Lily thought: what was wrong with the old bachelor finally marrying, finally loving his own son? He was going out on a limb for that boy, a fat old man becoming ridiculous. Exactly what was wrong with that? Was this soft spot undermined by his cruelty to his wife on the night of the birth, or did the cruelty make the soft spot miraculous?
Peter could be very biting, but tonight he’d been the kindest person on earth; he had invited her home with him. He’d recognized her loneliness, and her need. Some tyrants, even the worst, had loved animals. Didn’t that spell out lost possibilities? Didn’t that offer hope to know that these “almosts” exist? Not everything is ironic. Some contrasts spell magic.
Perhaps Peter had been exaggerating about Archibald. Perhaps Archibald had simply said that Helena didn’t look well, had said it only out of real concern. Poor Archibald: a wife with a child at last for him. Marriage was probably the most exotic, horrifying venture he’d ever embarked upon. No wonder he liked to bury his kisses deep in the folds of his baby’s soft neck, where they could at long last stay put.
7
THE GLOUCESTERSHIRE COUNTRYSIDE, where the Kendalls had their estate (inherited on Helena’s aristocratic side), was blustery and cold in the wintertime. Lily’s room was by far the frostiest she’d ever slept in: her muscles ached horribly each morning from tensing them rigid at night. At breakfast, Lily would try to smile cheerfully at her hosts, but found her face too stiff to widen; she displayed a few front teeth, like a cartoon woodchuck. She was stunned by their notion of how modestly living should afford comfort. Peter was quite tickled by her attempts to adapt to this Iceland.
“God, you poor thing, you’re shaking,” he’d say, barely suppressing a grin. He thought Lily was a spoiled American, and that this paradoxically frugal upper-class life was doing her “a world of good.”
“Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me strong,” she’d respond sarcastically. Peter used to pat Lily’s cheeks wit
h brazen chumminess to warm her up. Lily swore that if he thwacked her face like that just one more time, she’d twist his beak off. After three or four days of this ritual she began returning some hearty slaps. They made a sweet vaudevillian tableau: four hands flailing, eyes glittering with concentrated play.
One morning, she greeted Peter with the first blow, a swift, wide-swinging one which deposited a crimson fireball on his pale, astonished face. His mother walked in just then. Peter regained his composure in an instant. His mother stared calmly at his blazing cheek.
“Lily,” said Peter smoothly, after his mother had sat down to her food, “freezes at night.” Helena Kendall, saying nothing, swung at her egg with a spoon. That night, Lily discovered an electric blanket under her meager duvet.
Actually, Helena and Archibald were used to the slapping business. Peter told Lily that he and Julian often scuffled, even bit each other, holding on with doggish tenacity, and bellowing muffled execrations as they gave and got. Julian was not there yet. He was visiting his father in France for a few days. Lily was a trifle relieved: she could not have taken everything in all at once.
The land around the Kendall home was green, good for grazing. The sky was low and wide, a lazy sky. Long rambles were an English tradition, and they were the tradition of this family as well. Lily, accustomed to subway trains ejecting her at designated intervals, was discomfited by natural obstacles. The countryside had no “stops;” entrances (into vast strange fields) and exits (from bramble bushes) were a matter of native strength and agility. She was a hopeless climber, and had trouble leaping across the narrowest of ditches. One time her jeans got caught on a gate that she knew was going to be nothing but trouble. It was high; the lock was tied with a complicated bit of hemp; there was an unconcerned but lethal bit of metal jutting out on top. The whole family swung gaily over, even the portly Archibald, who whooshed like a medicine ball as Lily stood lamely by, growing smaller and smaller as they all trekked on. She tried, but was impeded by the obligatory, oversized gumboots which she’d borrowed from the family arsenal; she ended up dangling by her seat. Peter looked backwards and nudged Archibald in the ribs. They laughed similarly: haw! Haw!
Haw! Lily ruefully considered: I thought Peter hated his step-father, but they make quite a good couple now. Laurel and Hardy.
Peter ran over to Lily and tore her down. Once back on her feet, she tramped hotly ahead, feeling their eyes upon her ragged end.
The sheep distracted her from her peevishness. They were really something to see. Dotting the hills with their lumpen presence. They were still, more still than the faint breezes that did not stir their thick wool. The wool seemed to fill the air with an off-white humming monotony. The sheep had other powers. You could not win a staring contest with these sheep. They were as unflappable as Kafka’s extras, witnesses who had always been around, who had always understood nothing. They seemed painted into the landscape, an emblematic pattern.
In time, Lily became accustomed to the inhospitable outdoors, and did not mind so much being cold and wet and tired at once. Being outside in the country in winter was like heavy physical exercise. You sensed the nobility of the body’s struggle, how it, like the mind and the soul, aimed for the infinite, for the “just once more!” It enjoyed its own strainings, tumbling from them into gratifying fatigue. Earned fatigue was the noblest thing in life, she thought.
After the walks, she felt a grand sort of solitude. She’d sit on stile, resting, as her heart slowed and silenced the rough banging in her chest. She’d feel that nature had had her, hard, like an ardent lover. Peter might sit next to her, breathing softly and radiating a surprising tenderness.
Archibald would hoist his little Timothy over the low, cracked bough of the yew tree just outside the house. His voice would travel faintly back to Lily, a note lower than the wind’s; she’d hear him singing “Rock-a-Bye-Baby.” She’d hear, but partly through her own imagination, the familiar words “when the bough breaks, the cradle will fall.” Archibald’s voice would fade in and out, carried toward her or away by the winds.
Mrs. Kendall might be staring at a riderless horse in the distance. The horse, tossing its mane, in the air gallivanting with the freedom of choice, freeing himself every which way and then, suddenly, magically, vanishing. Mrs. Kendall might say something like, “Tame a horse like that and you’ve got yourself a true-blue thoroughbred. Leave it wild, and you’ve got the very devil.”
They’d turn to the shed, tug off their muddy Wellington boots, leave them behind, and enter the home again. Now it felt warm and clean. They’d sit down to a peaceful supper. Archibald would light the candles.
Lily was moved by it all, limp with happiness. Everything was rich, proffered and bountiful. Her eyes travelled from face to face. Archibald. Helena. Timothy. Peter. Peter was talking.
“Any word from the Princeling?”
“Oh,” laughed Mrs. Kendall prettily. “You know Julian.”
She said the name caressingly, and a demure hand fluttered to a slender throat.
“Yes, I have had that privilege,” said Peter.
“I only pray,” continued Helena, “that he doesn’t end up suddenly straggling in on Boxing Day.”
“What’s that?” Lily’s thin voice. She’d never heard of Boxing Day (to her it sounded, of course, pugilistic). Ordinarily, she wouldn’t have asked; she’d have played along. Boxing? Boxing. But talk of Julian had loosened her lips.
“Well, my dear,” said Archibald, “of course it’s the day after Christmas. Has a bit to do with putting sweeties in boxes, doesn’t it,” he added rhetorically.
Oh, like Purim, she thought. Purim was her favorite holiday. It featured Esther, a fantastic Jewish heroine (and beauty) who’d won the heart of a King. On Purim, one sent boxes of goodies around to one’s friends, and to the poor.
“Archibald,” Peter said patiently, “Lily doesn’t celebrate Christmas, so how would she know that?”
“No, it’s not that,” said Lily hastily. “Nobody does ‘Boxing Day’ in America.”
“Oh,” said Archibald. “Oh, I see. How very strange.” He was trying to coax a brussels sprout into Timothy’s mouth. “How very strange.”
“Stwange!!” said Timothy sternly. “Vewy stwange!”
Archibald wiped the baby’s chin and cleared his throat. “At any rate, young Julian, harumm!! If he should happen to miss Christmas Day, Helena, I do not think it advisable to give him his present. One should not reward a show of disrespect.”
“No pwezzy!!” Timothy kicked his legs gleefully under the table. “Naughty boy!” Quite a sturdy kid, thought Lily, feeling the blows under her vibrating plate. The accountant laid his hand firmly across the child’s ankles. “Let his father get him a present out there in France, if he can’t abide by the rules of place and time.”
“Oh, darling, he’ll surely be here,” said his wife. “He’s getting to be quite a grown-up and responsible young man. I shouldn’t think he’d want to miss Christmas with his brothers.”
“Well,” grumbled Archibald, “he certainly won’t have a proper Christmas out there. Do the Holy Romans have a Boxing Day, I wonder? I rather doubt it.”
“At any rate, he’ll be here soon,” said Helena, ignoring this tirade against the Catholics. “All tall and straight and handsome.”
“Handsome is as handsome does, Helena, as you know.”
“Yes, dear. Yes, you’re quite right.” She stared distractedly at the pretty young girl Peter had invited. “He does begin to take after his father in certain distressing ways,” she added quietly, as though to herself.
“I haven’t told him that I’ve brought the Beauty home,” said Peter, reading his mother’s mind.
“Would you like some more lamb, dear?” Mrs. Kendall asked Lily. “There’s quite a lot left, and it’s especially tender.
8
WHISK, THE FAMILY CAT, was a survivor. As soon as he discovered that the guest’s bed stayed warm from the electric blanket, he
began to make a habit of spending his long, lazy afternoons in unheard-of comfort. Each evening, Lily would find him sighing contentedly in the deep rhythms of a good sleep. His soft white fur glowed from the country moon outside the window. Each evening, Whisk reluctantly awoke, yielding to Lily with a dignity that shamed her. She felt uneasy for several minutes after the cat padded, tail aloft, into the cold shadowy stairway, as though he had witnessed enough of her chronic selfishness. By the time Lily came shivering downstairs for breakfast, Whisk would already be lapping the “top of the milk” from a Beatrix Potter bowl. The bowl said: “Peter sat down to rest. He was very damp with sitting in that can.”
Once, she touched Whisk’s fur as he lapped industriously away. It was freezing, a fact that Whisk communicated nonchalantly, without having to look at her. He continued to nourish himself, offering no sign of acknowledgment. Lily stroked Whisk until, finally, a slow warmth began to rise, to respond, from the pink flesh below his fur.
Timothy, rubbing his eyes sleepily, wandered in. He stopped short, planted himself, and said: “Whisk is my cat,” in a small voice that had no argument in it. He was stating a fact. His face, lunar in its roundness, completely filled Lily’s field of vision. She was crouching at Whisk’s side. She stared into the three-year-old’s enormous eyes, which seemed, at that range, to waver into a single ocular glow. He was terrifyingly simple and right.
