Birds of America

by Mary McCarthy

  From time to time, she wagged her Clairol-tinted head confidentially at Peter, in token of despair—as when she ascertained that his mother had walked to the turkey farm to pick out the bird—and his aunt Millie was such a consummate spectator that he felt himself pulled into a box seat beside her, watching their private life—his and his mother’s—unfold, with the embarrassed sense that it was, as Millie would say, a “performance.” Not real, footlit, with stage snow outside and stagey food on the table, against a painted backdrop of old-time New England seascape. With shame, he saw himself through her eyes as conned by his mother into a storybook romance, which they lived on a daily basis—he licked his lips, mortified to admit it—and not just when they had company. The fact that his mother made his breakfast every morning, instead of simply leaving corn flakes and frozen fruit juice and chocolate milk for him, became a hideous confession as his aunt sweated it out of him. He was guilty of being less average than his cousins, and that was his wicked mother’s fault.

  Peter could well see that his aunt, behind a façade of good nature, was jealous of her sister. His mother was a musician, while Millie worked for a music publisher. When they were girls, his mother had been feckless and dreamy, and Millie had been the practical one, but now his mother had a passion for work, and Millie was shrewd and lazy. His mother had a glowing girlish skin, which she scrubbed with soap and water, disobeying her sister’s warnings, while Millie’s creamed skin sagged. Most of all, Peter guessed, his aunt was jealous of his mother’s “hold” on himself, which she could not reproduce on her own uninteresting progeny. But jealousy had made her watchful, and Peter, a veteran observer, his mother’s privileged critic, could not help responding to the prose in his aunt’s view of them. What were they doing here anyway, playing house together, a growing boy and a woman nearly forty, who was old enough to be his mother? Millie’s common sense was the Tempter in the Garden. He fell. “Peter, go open the door.” What could he do but obey?

  She had come in the nick of time to set things right; that was what she plainly thought. Aunt Millie always acted like that, whenever she paid a visit—as though her coming was providential. With her tinted hair, she reminded Peter rather of King Arthur’s trouble-making sister, Queen Morgan le Fay. A fairy tale needed a bad fairy; he ought to have considered that before. She had arrived tugging at her girdle and waving her stout wand of disenchantment. And when she left, everything was blighted. “You feel gloomy because you ate too much, Peter,” his mother told him as he helped her wipe a mountain of dishes. But Peter knew he was not wrong. The next morning, the apple blossoms were blasted, and the tree, he was afraid, would never get up the strength to bloom again in the spring. He blamed this on his aunt and he was not the only one. “You brought winter with you,” Mrs. Curtis had shot at Millie, like a sudden accusation, after her second drink. Thanksgiving, as Peter saw it, had been his last day of grace. After that, he paid his debt to society. The following week, they went to dinner at Mrs. Curtis’ house. They began to meet people. Thanks to Millie, the sluices opened, and Rocky Port rushed in.

  Yet the reality did not live up to Peter’s forebodings, which alarmed him, as though his early-warning system had been misled by a flight of birds. Unless he was softening up, their new acquaintances were not a threat. Behind their fanlight doorways was a fog of amnesia, induced, he thought, by alcohol, which flowed in Lethean streams from the liquor store. The worst thing they did was repeat themselves, playing the same dulled record; for years, nobody had bothered to change their needle. They did not have the energy to get up a musical evening. The admiral, who did crewelwork, and his wife, who painted china, were the most strenuous members of the community.

  The men drove about in their cars, dressed like hunters or trappers, in boots and mackinaws and fur caps, to visit their frozen-food lockers. Their wives offered Peter’s mother lifts to go marketing and invited Peter to view television. The few men in his mother’s age-group were already paired off, and their cars would be recognized if they tried to take her to the bird sanctuary and make a pass. There was no danger here that Peter could see. Being a musician, his mother could not hit the bottle. True to her promise, she bought them skates; when it snowed again, their own footprints and the tracks of birds and animals were the only trails leading in and out of the still woods. Peter’s uneasiness subsided; he let her go out to dinner without him and did not lie awake listening for her step on the porch. One afternoon, as he was coming home from school, he thought he heard the harpsichord playing, but when he opened the door, the music had stopped. His mother was talking on the telephone, and he guessed he might have been mistaken.

  They arranged to go to Millie’s for Christmas, so that they did not have their tree. Now that they were acquainted in Rocky Port, his mother said, they would never be allowed to have Christmas by themselves. It would be considered unfriendly. Peter did not argue; he accepted the lesser evil and besides he would not mind seeing New York, he thought. But it would have been fun to chop down their own tree in the woods. He found it queer, to think that for the first time since he was a baby he would not be popping corn over the fire and watching her string those chains, like red and white beads, of popcorn and cranberries alternating, that festooned her lap and trailed over the carpet, while the long white thread in her needle turned pink from the cranberry juice. He would not be helping her gild walnuts or make gingerbread men, putting in the raisins for the face and buttons himself. He pictured last Christmas in Berkeley and felt homesick, unexpectedly, for Hans, heavyfooted on a ladder, hanging candy canes on the green branches. He was acquiring a distrust for holidays.

  Christmas Eve, on Riverside Drive, he hung up his sock with his cousins. Millie’s tree had balls and lights and nothing edible on it at all—not even a gold-wrapped chocolate coin. They were lucky, he told his mother, it was not dyed. From his aunt and uncle, he received—guess what?—a camera; his aunt’s presents were always pointed, like the baseball mitt she had once sent him, to tell his mother that he should take an interest in athletics. From the fair Rosamund he got a pair of field glasses, which was what he had been fearing. He would rather have bought them himself, second hand, in a pawnshop; his mother was not good at picking out articles like bird books and field glasses—her idea was to get the most expensive. She also gave him a seal ring with the head of some Greek worthy, tickets to Carmen at the opera, and The Seasons by Haydn.

  On Christmas Day, there was a party. Millie had invited some of his mother’s old gang: her agent, the chamber group she used to play with, the head of a record company. E così via; his aunt did not need to explain the principle of the party to Peter—he got it. She was master-minding her sister’s comeback. His mother had a new dress, and Millie took her around and made her talk to all the people who could “do something” for her; there was a man from the State Department in charge of cultural exchanges and an old society lady who gave recitals at her house. Peter, who helped make drinks, got sick on Martinis and was taken to the bathroom by a friendly woman who said she used to be his mother’s page-turner. He retched most of the night, and his aunt philosophically put a basin by his bed; it was time he stopped being babied, she told his mother, who wanted to call a doctor with a stomach pump. When they finally got back to Rocky Port, there was New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day eggnog. Then at midyears, he failed his higher algebra.

  On receipt of the news, the babbo drove down from Wellesley and talked gloomily about college boards. As a pedagogue, he was hipped on college admissions statistics. “You ought to have looked into the schools before coming here,” he said sharply. “I talked to your sister. She tells me the boy is not even getting Latin now.” It was true, the Rocky Port high school did not give Latin; Peter’s aunt had wormed this out of him during Thanksgiving dinner. “He will never get into Harvard now,” the babbo said tragically. He sounded very angry with his mother. It was just like old times, Peter thought, listening from his bedroom. The babbo had already been mad at her, it
transpired, for leaving Hans and coming here. Why could she not have waited another year, till Peter had finished algebra? “I find it very upsetting to have you back here in New England,” he grumbled, slightly lowering his voice. Peter’s mother ignored this. “New England has been good for Peter. He feels at home here. You always said he was a zoophile. It’s extraordinary what he’s learned this fall about Nature.”

  “Nature!” the babbo shouted. “Nature! Don’t be a goddamn fool! Nature is an anachronism. Does the boy have companions of his own age? Your sister tells me that he has not made a single friend. Can he qualify for any college from this high school? Or do you expect him to join the labor force at seventeen? When you are serious, we may begin talking again.” Peter’s mother remained silent. His father burst out. “And what will he do when you go on tour? Have you thought of that?”

  Upstairs at his desk, Peter pricked up his ears for his mother’s answer. But he could only catch the word “problem”; her voice had sunk too low. “You have not thought,” he heard his father sum up. “That is like you, cara mia. A creature of impulse. But don’t forget that I am paying the boy’s bills.” This was tough on his mother. She hated being reminded that his father was contributing to his support—which seemed perfectly just to Peter but not to her, because she had left his father. “What do you want me to do, Paolo? I’ve taken this house for a year. Do you suppose, if I could find a tutor …? He really has a very good mind.” He heard his father’s step; the door to the living room was closed softly. One of the babbo’s principles was that a child should never be praised in his own hearing.

  So that before he knew it, they had shanghaied him into boarding-school without even asking his consent. When Peter was summoned downstairs, it had already been decided. His father knew a school that specialized in “the boy of uneven attainments,” that is, the boy who had failed one or two subjects. It was not far from Wellesley. While his mother made tea, his father telephoned to the headmaster to find out if there was a vacant place and when he learned that there was, he ordered Peter to pack. His mother served tea, not making conversation, from shame, Peter knew, and because she was afraid that if she talked she would cry. She just looked at him across his father like somebody trying to exchange signals over the head of a guard. He knew her excuse: that the divorce decree gave his father control over his education. Finally, she spoke up. Peter would have to have a haircut and name-tapes on his clothes; he could not go, just like that. But his father was being a man of action—the old “cosa fatta capo ha” stuff. If Peter drove back with him tonight, he would be able to start the new term tomorrow; his mother could see about name-tapes and things of that kind later. If he needed further outfitting in a hurry, the babbo could take him to Boston one afternoon after classes.

  It was dark when they drove off; they were going to have dinner on the road. His father would not even let his mother fix them supper. “But when will I see him again?” Peter’s mother cried out in the doorway, as though she had not taken in, until that minute, what was happening. “Go in the house!” his father yelled. “You will catch cold.” “Yes, go in the house, Mother,” Peter said, with pity. It was not her fault he had failed algebra; he had brought this on himself. “At least put on a coat.” But she stood there, clasping her chest, under the wan porch-light, till his father impatiently promised to arrange for Peter to come home soon on a weekend, providing the headmaster gave a good report of him. She must not come to the school, which would upset Peter; the babbo would drive over himself every Sunday to take him out to lunch and check on his progress.

  Peter waved farewell to his mother; he blew a kiss, which probably she could not see. He thought of her alone with the tea dishes and the preparations for the supper he would never eat. “Tell the cormorants I’ll be seeing them!” As his father let out the clutch, it came to him that in fact he had not seen those three fishy characters for several days. Maybe longer. Or could it be that he had ceased to notice them—which meant that, without knowing it, he no longer cared? No wonder his father had come, like black retribution, to take him away.

  In school, he tried not to brood about his mother. If he acted unhappy, they would probably not let him go home till Easter. He signed up for the chess team and appeared on the hockey field. At night, he wrote her short amusing letters and sealed them with his seal ring. The only animal at school, aside from a few chickens, was the headmaster’s dachshund, to which he gave perfunctory pats whenever their paths crossed. The headmaster said he was making a good adjustment.

  On Lincoln’s Birthday, which that year made a long weekend, he was allowed to go home. His mother came to fetch him, driving Mrs. Curtis’ car. It was a beautiful bright blue morning. She had brought a picnic lunch and Peter’s field glasses, which he had forgotten. On the way back to Rocky Port, they stopped to eat in a glen up in the back country where they had never been. That was the day they found the waterfall, using a geodetic map Mrs. Curtis had left in the glove compartment. Peter circled the spot on the map, so that they would be able to locate it again when he came home for Easter.

  But then, in the car, his mother broke the news. She was giving up the house in Rocky Port. The man from the State Department (Peter remembered?) that she had met at Millie’s Christmas party was going to send her abroad with a chamber-music group. Their regular harpsichordist had had an automobile accident. His mother would have to be in New York to rehearse with them, and Mrs. Curtis had been very understanding and helpful about finding another tenant to finish out the lease. By a lucky coincidence, a house had burned down in Rocky Port just the other night, and the owners were looking for a place to live while they rebuilt it. It made an ideal arrangement. So that at Easter-time (“Think of it, Peter!”) she would be in Rome, playing, and he could fly over and be with her for his spring vacation. The babbo had agreed.

  Grimly, Peter recognized another of the fair Rosamund’s substitutes. It struck him that his being in boarding-school just now was a great convenience for his mother. As she babbled on, flushed and excited, he felt himself turn into another person—possibly a man, if they were made of stone. Cruelly, he wondered how long, exactly, she had known about this tour. “When did you get the invite, Mother?” “Oh, just the other day. Last week.” He watched her cheek redden, as if she guessed what he was thinking. “I thought I wouldn’t write you about it but save it to tell you when you came.” He stared at the road. “Who set the fire?” he inquired. “What fire?” “The house that burned down so opportunely,” he said with an acid smile.

  Her hands, in leather and chamois driving-gloves, tightened on the wheel. For a moment, he relented. “I suspect Mrs. Curtis in the verandah with the kitchen matches,” he proposed lightly, alluding to their old game of Clue. She patted his bony knee. “You don’t mind, do you, Peter? I thought since you were in school anyway … And Easter isn’t so far off. I thought you’d like to go to Rome. After all, you’ve never been abroad.” “That means we’ll never come back to Rocky Port, doesn’t it, Mother?” “I don’t know, Peter. How can I say? Maybe in the summertime.” “But I’ll be with babbo then.” “Not all the time. Now that you’re in school it wouldn’t be fair for him to have you the whole summer. We’ll have to divide you.” “In what proportions?” he said coldly.

  He studied his mother’s profile. A tear trembled in her eye. If he were on a jury, he might give her the benefit of the doubt. Probably it was true that she had just got the official invitation. But wasn’t it likely—more than likely—that she had been sounded out, some time back, through her sister? Maybe on Christmas Day even, while they slugged him with Martinis. Then his father’s visit would have been a charade enacted for his consumption. If he had not failed algebra, they would have found some other pretext. Once they had him in school, they could do what they wanted. If he ran away, the headmaster would have him tracked with bloodhounds, which had already happened to another kid.

  He endeavored to reason with himself. Had his mother ever lied to him
before? The stone man answered cynically: not that he knew of. He felt his sanity totter. If the fair Rosamund was false, then his whole life, up to now, was a deception, and if she was not false, he was batty. He found himself wondering about the other harpsichordist’s automobile “accident.” Did his mother have an alibi? He giggled sardonically to himself.

  His mother’s head turned quickly in his direction. “Pay attention to the road, Mother.” Supposing he were to take her, step by step, over the history of the offer, demanding times and places. “Was it mentioned to you at Christmas, Mother? Think back. Take your time.” But what if she confessed? He would not want to hear it. And actually the details did not matter. What mattered was that she was glad he was in boarding-school, so that she was free to go to Europe. And he was not glad; that was the difference between them. Maybe she had not arranged to put him there; maybe she was on the level. But now that it had come about, she was profiting. All she cared about, he thought with contempt, was that her conscience should be clear.

  In their house, everything looked strange. Her instruments were gone, and there was a large blue trunk open in the living room; she had bought it at the junk shop and painted it. His shirts and socks and underwear were packed, with name-tapes sewed on them; she was giving him the stereo set, to take back to school with him, and the records she called his, which now, he noted, included Don Giovanni, The Messiah, and one of her own old recordings that was a present to her from Mrs. Curtis. In the kitchen, she had live lobsters waiting for him to cook.