Answer as a Man
Page 37
Then she shrugged. When did whiskey ever hurt anyone? Especially small amounts she had been drinking in sherry? Hesitating, afraid, she thought of the dank dark cellar, with spiders, where Patrick kept his hard liquor. She looked at the locked part of the dining-room wine cabinet, then furtively knelt and examined the lock. It could be opened by unscrewing the hinge. She went upstairs for a steel nail file. Then, kneeling again in the dim silence, she hurriedly, almost frantically turned the screws. The door opened; the screws dropped on the carpet. She filled her wineglass with a large portion of whiskey, then cleverly replaced the screws and locked the door.
She sat in the library, and the familiar euphoria soon embraced her. She thought only of Lionel, and she was filled with joy and desire and passion. She sipped. Then she dozed, still smiling, until the dinner bell rang more and more peremptorily. Sluggishly she obeyed its call, and ate alone, staring with shining eyes into the distance. She ate very little tonight. After dinner she climbed upstairs to her room and fell onto her bed, dreaming happily of the glade and Lionel’s embraces.
When she awoke at midnight, and the house slept, she went downstairs and again opened the whiskey cabinet. This time she shrewdly replaced the loss with water so her father would not suspect. If he did, he would blame the servants. That would never do. He would only buy a lock that could not be picked. Then she thought of Tim, the handyman. He was a sly, exigent man. He could be bought—and he could buy her the whiskey she now knew she could not resist. But whiskey never hurt anyone. Did it? One just had to be careful. It was not that she drank. She just needed the surcease from pain—and the visions of Lionel. Everyone needed something, didn’t they? Life was very dull at its best, especially in Belleville.
Jason forgot to go into his wife’s bedroom the next morning for the first time since they were married. He ate breakfast alone with Patrick. On the hall table he found another letter from his brother, John. He made a mouth. Letters from the priest exasperated him, always, and he usually delayed reading them. He put it in his pocket and went upstairs again to see his children.
It was Decoration Day. Jason had taken the day as his holiday, and Lionel would take Independence Day. Nicole and Nicholas and Sebastian were already waiting for him, corpulent little Nicole sedate in spite of her absurd dress of fluffy Swiss eyelet voile with its rows of stiff French lace on almost every inch, and her slippers with immense black silk bows, and her curled hair topped by another huge bow of white silk. She wore a sash of bright pink silk about her thick waist, and the great bow perched on her substantial rear like a rudder. She was quite aware of the grotesquerie of her mother’s choice, but bore it with her customary resignation and dignity. Her gray eyes this morning were the color of a sunlit sea at dawn, and Jason, looking fondly down at her, felt a warm glow of love for his small daughter. “Hello, Grandma,” he said, gently pinching her cheek.
She smiled at him, and her face flashed with dimples. “Hello, Sonny-boy,” she said, and held her face for his kiss. Nicholas bounced up on the balls of his feet, fervid and flushed as always and shouting incoherently. Nicole put a firm hand on his shoulder, and he subsided a little. He pushed a new toy, a jack-in-the-box, at his father, making the lid slap up and down. “Look, look!” he shrieked. “It jumps, bang, bang, bang! Look, look!”
“I see,” said Jason, and smoothed the damp lank hair back from his son’s forehead. The child bounced like the toy itself, and he gasped and his eyes gleamed senselessly. Nicole took his arm, murmured something, and the boy looked at her as at a strong-minded mother and fell silent. Sebastian, as usual, waited quietly. Jason felt quite foolish at the surge of love he felt for his older son and the recognition of fellowship and, indeed, friendship. He held out his hand to the young boy, and Sebastian gravely took it. They shook hands like men who understand each other.
The nursery was full of blazing light and a hot wind heavy with the scent of roses. A few days ago Patricia had said with vexation, “Are you going to take the children to the cemetery this year, Jason?” “Yes,” he had replied.
The gardener had prepared two large bunches of flowers, wrapped in wet paper. Jason took his children downstairs, not pausing at Patricia’s door as he would have done only last week. It was not deliberate; he simply did not think of her. The man and his children got into the waiting red Cadillac, with its fawn canvas top folded down. He guided the automobile through the silent sunlit streets, under the dancing shade trees, over rough cobbles and then smooth macadam. It was very early. A few men were out hosing down the hot grass; a very few children sat on porches under awnings. It was a pleasant day. Jason thought that, after all, it was good to be alive, it was good to know and feel this splendid day, it was good to have such children, it was good to be prosperous, even if in debt. He sweltered in his somber black mourning suit, but even that was not unbearable.
It was exactly the sort of day, he thought, to visit a cemetery. Even sorrow was almost sweet on a day like this, and if the dead knew of it, they would rejoice, too. He smiled at the idea. The dead knew nothing; they were beyond joy and pain, sadness and celebration, and perhaps that was good, too. He had not gone to Mass this morning. There was nothing to pray for in church, where the adversary lived with an unchanging face and a changeless heart—if he indeed had one.
Only Sebastian remembered last Decoration Day, for the twins had been too young to go to visit Kate’s grave. “This time,” said Sebastian, “we see Grandpa’s grave, don’t we?”
“Grandpa, Grandpa!” screamed Nicholas, and bounced on the hot leather seat of the automobile. “I didn’t bring my jack-in-the-box to show Grandpa!”
“Grandpa’s in heaven,” said Nicole severely. “Do be quiet, Nick.”
Nicholas bounced even more fervently. “In heaven, in heaven, we all go to heaven!”
“Perhaps,” said Nicole, and again, and more firmly, quieted him. Sebastian sat beside Jason, leaning against his shoulder. “Do you think Grandpa will know we are visiting his grave, Papa?”
Jason knew he should say, “Of course he will know.” But one did not lie to Sebastian or croon reassurance that a child like Sebastian did not need anyway. So Jason said, “I don’t know, dear. No one knows.”
Nicole said in her steadfast voice, “Everybody knows, Papa.”
Jason thought of what Lionel had said lately about the little girl: “What a reverend mother she will make, if she decides she has a vocation. God help the poor young nuns under her rod, and the innocent little novices. She reminds me of old Sister Agatha.” With which, after a moment’s reflection, Jason had to agree, laughing. “If there is such a thing as reincarnation, then Nicole is either my great-great-grandmother or Sister Agatha.” Sister Agatha had died six years ago, indomitable and irascible to the very last, even when she had listened with daunting attention to Father Sweeney’s litany for the dying. “It was an intimidating experience,” he confessed later to Jason. “I felt as if I were still stumbling over my catechism.” He had paused. “I expected her to reach for her switch, paralyzed though she was.”
They reached the cemetery, Holy Cross. It was very small and filled with cheap little headstones and small crosses and crumbling urns. But it was crowded with people, old and young, bearing flowers and pots of geraniums. The silence was broken by voices praying aloud, chatting to friends, and even scolding children. It made for a festive atmosphere. A conscientious soul was running a clattering lawnmower over some graves, and it was a comforting sound in this little garden for the dead. Jason led the way first to his parents’ grave. Kate lay beside her husband, Peter, and Bernard lay next to her. There was a very small headstone on the first two graves—“Katherine Garrity, Peter Garrity. RIP.” Jason had put a temporary wooden cross on Bernard’s grave, until the marble one would arrive.
He let the solemn Nicole lay the flowers on her grandparents’ graves. Her dignity was never more manifest, her movements slow and careful. She then watched her father place flowers on Bernard’s grave. Jason look
ed down at the still-raw earth, and his face darkened and tightened. Sebastian took his hand in wordless sympathy. No one noticed, at first, that Nicholas had run away among the gravestones. It was Nicole who first was aware of his absence.
“Oh, that awful boy!” she exclaimed. “I hear him screaming. I’ll get him, Papa.” She moved away with amazing speed on her short fat legs, and soon reached Nicholas, who had paused beside an elderly weeping couple, man and wife, who were kneeling by a new grave and sobbing. He was demanding to know why they were crying, and his shrill voice vexed the mourners, who stared at him. Nicole reached him, took his arm in a hard grip, apologized to the annoyed couple, and led her brother away, scolding him quietly. “You mustn’t disturb people,” she said. “They come to be with their dead.”
“I’m not dead, dead, dead!” he shrieked excitedly, and tried to tear himself loose. But Nicole’s grip was too strong, and she almost dragged him back to her father and brother. He began to cry loudly, and tears ran down his twitching face. Released, he ran to Jason and clutched his thighs and jabbered fresh incoherencies, pointing to Nicole accusingly. Jason patted his head. Then he saw Saul Weitzman approaching with a pot of small pink flowers and a trowel.
“I bring flowers for Bernie, Jason,” he said. He smiled under his trim white mustache and looked shyly at the younger man. “And say a prayer for the repose of his soul.”
“If he has one, he isn’t reposing,” said Jason. “He’s probably somewhere else, raising hell,” and he smiled his gratitude at Saul. “Or having a drop of the creature while arguing with the Devil.”
Saul smiled in silence and shook his head. The children watched him as he stiffly knelt and dug a small hole for the flowerpot. When it was planted, Saul replaced his hat, stood up, bent his head and clasped his hands, and quietly prayed in Hebrew. Then, to Jason’s curiosity, he looked about him, found a smooth white stone, and laid it on an arm of the wooden cross.
“What does that mean?” asked Jason.
Saul hesitated. “Well, we believe that if you put a stone on a grave the sleeper knows you have been there. You haven’t forgotten him.”
“Oh,” said Jason. He did not know why tears flooded his eyes. He blinked hard and turned to his children. “Saul, you know my older boy, Sebastian, and the twins, Nick and Nickie. Nickie’s the girl, an old lady.”
Gravely Saul and Sebastian shook hands. Nicole made an awkward curtsy. Nicholas stared and hummed. It came to Jason that the child was never quiet. If not screaming demandingly, he hummed like a telephone wire in a wind, and as meaninglessly. His eyes never ceased their jumping. For the first time Jason felt a twinge of uneasiness. The child was never really still, not even when he slept. He churned up his bed and tangled his sheets with his small thin arms and legs. He often dangerously choked when eating, for he could not stop chattering.
“You have dear children, Jason,” said Saul.
“I know.” But he continued to watch Nicholas.
“You are blessed,” said Saul.
“I hope so,” said Jason. Nicole had taken her brother’s hot little hand and was holding it still, like a controlling mother. Sebastian was looking at the stone on the cross. His tall young body, clad in a white suit with brass buttons, was motionless, and all at once Jason thought that the child was not really a child. He was a man in a child’s body. Tears gathered again in Jason’s eyes.
Nicholas screamed, “I want to go pee-pee! Now!”
“All right,” said Nicole, and looked toward the distant fence, where a few bushes bristled, and led her twin away. Saul and Jason and Sebastian laughed. They watched the little ones hurrying away. “Nickie’s really his mother,” said Jason. “She’s the only one who can subdue him.”
Sebastian watched his brother and sister until they disappeared behind the bushes. The sun was getting hotter; the headstones shimmered with light.
“I must get back to the shop,” said Saul. “Even on a holiday, the people, they come. For milk and bread they’ve forgotten, though it’s illegal to sell.” He spread out his hands. “But one must live.”
He shook hands with Jason and Sebastian and trotted off natty as always in his old pressed suit, carrying his trowel. “He’s a good man,” said Sebastian.
“And that makes him rare,” said Jason. Sebastian glanced up at him quickly, his agate eyes understanding, and again Jason had the thought that his son was a man, not a child. Jason said, “Two weeks ago, Sebastian, some bad people came here and overturned the urns and the headstones and scrawled obscenities on them. They don’t like Catholics.”
Sebastian nodded, as if accepting the wickedness of humanity. “People don’t like each other, Papa.”
“I wonder why.” But Sebastian did not answer.
The two other children were returning. Jason felt a hard jolt in his chest. They were accompanied by Molly Dugan, whose arms were filled with flowers. Molly had bent her head and was listening intently to Nicole, and smiling. Nicholas had begun to run in tight circles down the path and over the grass. He was like a wound-up top which never stopped whirling.
Molly looked at Jason and smiled. “Hello,” she said in her quiet voice, as firm as Nicole’s. Jason could not answer. He could only look into Molly’s golden eyes and admire her tall pretty figure clad in a pale green linen dress, simple and unadorned. Suddenly he was aware of no one else, not even his children. His heart had set up an intense throbbing. He felt a mixture of immeasurable joy and pain and longing and harsh desire. His mouth had become dry, with a metallic taste.
Molly’s eyes widened on him. She was flushing like a startled young girl. Then she half-turned aside. “I brought flowers for my parents,” she said. Her voice was unsteady, her wide mouth uncertain. She plucked a rosebud from her bunch of blossoms and bent and laid it gently on Bernard’s grave. “I loved him, too,” she said. She looked up at Jason, and her eyes were wet. “I loved him …”
“Everybody loved Da,” said Nicole, who was looking from her father to Molly, and seeing everything. “He said he knew you when you were little, like us, Aunt Molly.”
“Yes, dear,” said Molly. She looked only at the grave. “I used to visit your Auntie Joan.”
(“Why do you think she was always in your house?” Patricia had cried.)
Jason’s voice was hoarse. “Where’s Daniel?” he asked.
“He’s in Boston. Some hysterical client asked him to come.” Molly’s tone was neutral.
“There’s a bench over there,” said Jason, “in the shade. Nickie, watch Nick, and Sebastian, you watch them both.” He was trembling.
Molly seemed startled again. She glanced up and saw Sebastian clearly, as she had never seen him before. There had been times when she had sensed a vague resemblance to someone in the child, but the recognition invariably fleeted away, leaving her uneasy and unsettled and puzzled. Sebastian was looking at her seriously, and the sun lit up his curls, and they were on fire in the sun, as fiery as her own hair. And she saw, in that light, the yellow flashes in his large eyes, the band of ginger freckles across his nose and over his pale fine cheeks, and the graceful posture of his child’s body.
Forgetting even Jason and her joy in the sight of him, she said to herself, in real anguish, “Oh, no, no, no!” She was remembering her alarm over Patricia’s meetings with Lionel; she was remembering the plea she had made to Daniel to “do something.” She was remembering her denunciations of her brother, her fear for Patricia. Now she could not take her terrified gaze from Sebastian; she was remembering, too, that he was a “seventh-month child.”
A full-term child—Lionel’s son. Her own flesh and blood. And that surprising and precipitate marriage of Patricia and Jason. She had been numbed by it, had been unable to feel much after she had heard of it. For a long time, reality had become blurred, for her grief had been overwhelming. She had never fully remembered the next few months. They had been like a long and deadly nightmare, with shadows voiceless and inchoate. She had moved among them.
She tried to speak, but it was some moments before she could. Then she almost whispered, “No. Not really. No. I think it’s the sun.” She could look at him now; her eyes were great with suffering, and he did not know it was for him. Then her eyes filled with tears. She felt his warm hand on her flesh. She wanted to put her hand over his, to press it closer to her. Then she turned away. “I must go,” she said. She had dropped her flowers on the grave. Then, before Jason could speak again, she stumbled blindly away.
Jason watched her go. An enormous emptiness surrounded him, an enormous loneliness. He watched until she disappeared through the gate. “Molly,” he said aloud, and the sun seemed to have lost its brightness.
He was stunned into immobility by the power of his own emotions. He had known Molly since early childhood; he had disliked her, avoided her, condemned her in his boy’s irrational judgment. He had thought her ugly and uncouth. When had he stopped believing all this? He could not remember. All these years he had reiterated his old aversion for Molly. When had he stopped? It must have been a long time ago, though he had been unaware of it himself. Had he been trying to avoid the truth? Surely his “new” indifference to Patricia had not been sudden, but had been growing over the past few years, while he consciously tried to deny it.