The Madwoman Upstairs

by Catherine Lowell

  Sir John’s home was close to the parsonage, yet it took us over thirty minutes to make it there, on account of how slowly he moved and how easily the storm confused him. Outside of a classroom, his disorientation was severe. More than once, he stopped where he was and sniffed the air like an old lion who knew he would one day collapse and be consumed by a rival pride. Cautiously, I offered him a steadying hand. He did not say anything, but his grip on my arm was tight.

  His home was a squat, secluded house on top of a small lump of the moors. Next to nothing and no one, it was the sort of house you’d only buy if you were the curator of the Brontë Parsonage (and divorced). In the dim outside lights, the snow-covered shrubs looked like paws poking out of the padded white earth. We were thoroughly soaked.

  The walk had not been kind to Sir John, who now looked a century and a half old. He took his time locating his keys. On his front stoop, I noticed a miniature Christmas village and several dead plants. When he shoved the door open, a shingle dropped off the wall.

  “Leave it,” he barked.

  I left it. We stamped the snow off our boots and walked inside, where I immediately let out a small but healthy scream. There, pinned against the opposite wall of the narrow foyer, was a moose head. It stared at me with a quizzical expression that seemed to say, I died disastrously in Alaska.

  I said, “Who shot this?”

  “One of my sons.”

  “I didn’t know people still hunted moose.”

  “They do.”

  “How many do you have?” I asked.

  “Moose?”

  “Sons.”

  “Seven.”

  Seven! I left my shoes where Sir John had put his, then shed my jacket and hung it on the wall. I found it difficult to imagine Sir John with an entire von Trapp family’s worth of children. Where had they all come from? Certainly he wasn’t the sort of man who thought about procreation. How savage.

  I dropped my duffel bag and followed him into his living room. It was damp and smelled of tuna and old dog. The décor was less majestic than I would have anticipated. Half of me thought I would find an entire stash of stolen art, a bureau filled with awards and trophies, or at least a bust of his own head. But all I found in the center of the room was a dilapidated orange couch, awkwardly stationed there as though waiting for its final paycheck. There was a square card table and four old chairs. I recognized the novel on the table: Peaches of Mirth.

  I looked up. “I didn’t know you read my father’s novels.”

  This one, I remembered, was Dad’s sequel to The Grapes of Wrath. Sir John didn’t respond. He just took a freshly poured drink to the couch, and wilted into his seat. He was panting in a series of short leaks. With each breath it looked like his long, lanky body might fold over like a piece of scrap paper. I sat on one of the chairs across from him. The fireplace was not lit, nor did Sir John seem to have any intention of putting it to use. Would there be a place to dry off? I thought I could feel the onset of pneumonia.

  We waited in silence. All I could hear was the ticking of a clock that I couldn’t see. I looked around the squalor of the little room and didn’t tell Sir John what I was thinking, which was that he must have squandered all the dough he got from that original Anne Brontë painting. I bit my tongue.

  There was a loud crashing noise upstairs. Someone said, “Is that you?” Sir John didn’t react.

  “Is someone else here?” I asked, motioning upstairs.

  “My youngest.”

  “Is he the one who shot the moose?”

  No answer. I wondered if he had even heard me. The stomping upstairs grew louder and louder, until suddenly I heard a series of bearlike footsteps pounding down the staircase. I turned around just in time to see a grown man barreling into the room. Six and a half feet tall, dark hair, heavy eyebrows. I gasped.

  There—right there—was James Timothy Orville III.

  No. And yet . . . ? No. My mouth fell open. My professor was wearing sweatpants and bright red socks, and his T-shirt—not quite long enough for his torso—exposed the bottom ribbon of a white, marbled stomach. I looked him over from head to toe, wondering if this could in fact be his impressive stunt double. But no—I saw the familiar scar on his right arm, the acne scars on his forehead, the scowl on his face. Right now that scowl lifted and in its place erupted openmouthed, wide-eyed shock. He might have just seen the bloody ghost of Achilles. We suffered a silence worthy of divorce.

  Sir John looked at me. “Meet my son James.”

  There was no response from Orville and I gave a small curtsy to no one in particular. My cheeks burned. I found myself staring at him as I would an arresting seascape.

  “James, James,” I said. “What a familiar ring.”

  Orville recovered from his shock faster than I did. His face was impassive but his voice was pleasant.

  “Hello, Samantha,” he said.

  His father—God, was he really?—frowned between us. “You two know each other?”

  Orville seemed to be picking his words carefully. “This—that is—this is one of my students, Father.”

  One of his students. Was that all that I was? I wanted to be his best student, his only student, his wife-student. A look passed between father and son, and it was not a polite one. They seemed to be acknowledging a tapestry of unspoken emotions.

  “I see,” Sir John said briskly. “The daughter of Tristan Whipple? How strange that you neglected to mention her before, Jimmy.”

  Orville gave an innocent smile, but a look of hostility swept between them. He looked so much like his father just then that I wondered how I had never noticed the similarity before. Big forehead, big chin. Sir John straightened and turned to me not as an academic, but as a somewhat annoying parent.

  “Jimmy is the youngest tenured faculty member in one hundred years,” he said.

  I nodded. “That must have been tough, going through puberty and a career at the same time.”

  Orville ignored me and turned to his father. “What kept you so long? You look terrible.”

  “I had to escort the lady home,” said Sir John, with a cough.

  “I told you I would come and get you.”

  “I am not quite so ancient yet, my boy.”

  “Let’s get you changed.”

  “I can do it myself.”

  “Dad—”

  “Enough.”

  The two of them fell silent. Orville moved to help his father to a standing position. The old man uttered a meek protestation but let his son lift him to his feet. He looked so very old. I turned away. I realized that Sir John had not invited me over because he had a spare guest room. He simply could not have made it home by himself.

  I caught his eye. In that moment, as if he knew my heart was breaking, his expression changed. His near-black eyes, one of the last parts of his body to survive the onset of age, narrowed in resentment. He looked me over from navel to neck.

  “You’re nothing like Jimmy’s last girl,” he said.

  I said, “Pardon?”

  Orville urged his father toward the staircase. “Come, I’ll help you.”

  “What was her name again?” asked Sir John, in a voice that let us know he remembered the name perfectly well. “Some rabbit-faced blonde. German.”

  I raised my eyebrows intentionally, hoping that Orville would see them and want to explain. But he looked at me and snapped: “Kitchen. Meet me there.”

  “Was it Abigail something?” Sir John said. But Orville was already helping his father mount the stairs. The conversation, for the time being, was over.

  The kitchen was crowded and disorganized, with dark tiles and bright curtains. An old washing machine and dryer rattled fiercely in the corner like two enthusiastic marimbas. I tripped on a shoe on my way inside. Seven. Seven children. Family photos covered nearly every free inch of wall space, all featuring seven different versions of the same face. It was a strange place for photos. Sir John either wanted them where he could see them, or where
he couldn’t see them. In the largest photo—the one above the sink—all seven boys were together, wearing bow ties and school uniforms, and ordered by height and age. It looked like the entire crop of sons had been conceived in an Excel spreadsheet.

  Orville returned fifteen minutes later. He was panting slightly. I thought of the German girl. Rabbit-faced. What did that mean, exactly? I envisioned an orchard of freckles (the cute kind) and bright turquoise eyes. Orville must have hunted more than moose.

  “Which one is you?” I asked, motioning to the family photo, even though he didn’t need to answer. I already recognized him. He was the smallest one, with protruding ears, a crooked little-boy tie, and big fish lips that had apparently thinned with age and fatigue. He was shorter than the rest of his strapping brothers, and stood in the shade of six older men.

  The new, thin-lipped Orville in front of me opened the refrigerator, revealing a half-empty shelf filled primarily with beer and baking soda.

  “How do you like your eggs, Sam?”

  “Over easy,” I said. “Jimmy.”

  He took out a carton of eggs and smacked it on the counter. I’m sure several cracked. He pulled a pan out from the rack above him. The muscles underneath his T-shirt were thick and bloated, and I watched them in mild fascination. I wondered how Orville could walk around this house without a jacket. I was shivering.

  “So,” I said, wrapping my arms tightly around myself. “That’s your dad.”

  “Yes, that is my father.”

  “You never told me he was my father’s nemesis. Some people might find that suspiciously interesting.”

  “You never asked.”

  “He lives alone?”

  “My parents split when I was eighteen.”

  “And you’re closer to your mother than to your father?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  He turned on the stove. Small purple flames licked the sides of the rusty old pan. Instinctively, I took a step back. In went a square of butter and then eight eggs, one after the other. Orville swirled them slightly with his index finger, then wiped his hands on his pants. I couldn’t decide if he was angry or disinterested, and it concerned me that he could have the same expression for both.

  “You will kindly remember that I asked you not to do anything foolish,” he said. “Why did you come here?”

  “What would you have me do, sit home and knit?”

  The dryer, as if on cue, stopped. Orville crossed the room and yanked open its small, round door. He tossed me a gray V-neck and a pair of sweatpants.

  “Take these,” he said. “Stay warm.”

  The clothes smelled like him, but I couldn’t make out exactly what that scent was. A meadow? Fresh parchment? Sweat? It was hard to say. I felt nostalgic, for reasons I didn’t immediately understand.

  “Thank you,” I said. “Look west.”

  He turned away and I peeled off my sweater and shirt, which had been clinging to my body like leeches. I slipped on Orville’s soft cotton T-shirt. I wondered what sort of man took care to buy such soft things, and if this really hadn’t been purchased by a cotton-loving lady, and if so, I wondered which lady had bought it for him, and did that lady have a gaggle of freckles and turquoise eyes? I yanked off my jeans and kicked them into a corner.

  “You’re mumbling,” Orville said with his back facing me. “What are you thinking of?”

  “The green-eyed monster which mocks the meat it feeds on.”

  “Pardon?”

  “I’m hungry. Is this dinner?”

  Orville took out a spatula. Apparently “over easy” was too hard, because he started scrambling the eggs, carefully pulling them apart the way one might arrange toy battleships.

  “I trust you’ve kept the matter of the painting in your room between us?” he said.

  “Certainly.”

  “My father knows nothing?”

  “Nothing.”

  The eggs smelled good. I pulled on the oversize sweatpants, which were worn in several places.

  “There, I’m done,” I said. “You can turn around now.”

  “Thank you.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking, don’t you find it cruel to keep your father from something he’s probably wanted for the last twenty years?”

  Orville turned to face me. “I do not believe in Pyrrhic victories.”

  “To be honest, sir, I’ve never known what that means.”

  He switched off the stove. “Ask your father.”

  Dinner was a quiet, desultory sort of affair. We sat at the card table and consumed Orville’s varied culinary creations: eggs, tuna, olives, beer. I learned several things. Both father and son loved The Philadelphia Story; Sir John hated gum-chewers and used the word tintinnabulation; Orville was the fifth son to follow his parents into academia and the only one to willfully adopt his mother’s surname. I noticed that Sir John had placed The Tenant of Wildfell Hall on the table. It rested between us like a small bomb.

  Halfway through the meal, Sir John put down his fork. “Are you seeing anyone, Samantha?”

  My eyes flew open. The eggs were all gone and I was working my way through Orville’s tuna impromptu.

  I said, “Sorry?”

  “Are there any leading men in your life?”

  “Several, but they’re all fictional.”

  He wasn’t smiling. “A girl as lovely as you? That surprises me.”

  I tried not to be insulted. When men said “lovely” in that tone of voice, it meant they didn’t think you were lovely at all.

  I said, “I suppose I don’t understand men.”

  “Is that because you can’t see how anything could possibly be so simple?”

  He looked at me as though I was missing something obvious. Orville was eating and did not look up. My presence had caused a rift between my two dinner dates. They rarely looked each other in the eye, and when they did, it was to exchange a lingering, hardened expression. Were they allies, or at odds? It was very Greek.

  Sir John pressed the subject. “Do you mean to tell me that in the most vibrant intellectual epicenter of the Western world, you haven’t found one source of temptation?”

  I said, “I have learned to fight against temptation, sir.”

  “James, did you hear that?” Sir John said to his son with a bemused smile. “Samantha fights against temptation.”

  “I heard that,” said Orville.

  “Tell me,” Sir John said. “Do they allow you back in the dining hall these days?”

  Orville slapped down his napkin. “Surely we can find something more interesting to discuss.”

  There was a moment’s pause. Sir John’s white hair looked static, like barbed wire.

  “Very well,” he said. His tone was unhurried, but there was an edge in it. He turned to me. “What are you fond of discussing, Samantha?”

  I was sure that by fond, he meant capable.

  Before I could answer, he said: “When Jimmy was young, we used to sit after dinner and discuss the invention of the paperback.”

  I said, “Until I was eight or nine, my father let me believe that the paperback was a type of whale.”

  There was no answer. Our forks screeched against the plates.

  I motioned to the book on the table. “Perhaps we can discuss The Tenant of Wildfell Hall,” I offered. “Sir John, you said months ago that you could help me understand it.”

  “No,” Orville interjected. “It’s impolite to discuss literature at the dinner table.”

  But Sir John looked pleased. He reached for the book.

  “Jimmy used to love the Brontës, Samantha,” he said. “I remember him sitting at our old dining room table in London, just like you are now, spouting a hundred misguided theories that we later had to correct. Remember, Jimmy, how you used to think Emily Brontë was bisexual? Do you remember?” He let out a crack of laughter. “Well, Jimmy, perhaps you’d like to be the first to offer your . . . shall we say . . . expertise.”

  “Jimmy”
did not look amused. He shut his mouth like a small animal. For a moment, I didn’t think either of them registered me at all. They looked like they might be about to snuff each other out.

  “Samantha’s father wrote in the margins, ‘Econ 101,’ ” said Sir John.

  “What of it?” said Orville.

  “That’s how Americans refer to elementary economics.”

  “I understand the reference, Dad.”

  Sir John tossed him the book like a final exam. “Why don’t you give it your best go.”

  Orville’s nostrils flared. I was terribly disoriented. I had never seen my professor as the student, with another man as his superior. I had an image of his sad little childhood: a big-eared boy cornered at a small table, bullied into reciting Proust. Orville did not pick up the book. Instead, he turned to me and released a long breath.

  “Do you remember Elizabeth Langland, Samantha?”

  I said, “No.”

  “We read her essays together.”

  “Did we? I can’t remember.”

  Sir John was wearing an amused smile. He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. An unspoken question seemed to pass between him and his son: Was Orville a good teacher, or a bad one?

  Orville cleared his throat. “What I think your father meant, Samantha, is that the book can be seen as a reflection of the emerging nineteenth-century economy. Helen has a trade; she is a professional artist. Gilbert is also a businessman, though his commodity is information. He defines the exchange of simple stories in economic terms. ‘If the coin suits you, tell me so, and I’ll send you the rest at my leisure. You would rather remain my creditor than stuff your purse with such ungainly, heavy pieces—tell me still, and I’ll pardon your bad taste, and willingly keep the treasure to myself.’ Don’t bother looking it up, Father; the quote is correct. ‘Treasure,’ for the first time, can be someone’s personal narrative. Helen herself is a ‘treasure’—something to be bought, sold, or perhaps won.”

  He glanced back at his father—a student waiting for approval.

  “Thank you, Jimmy,” said Sir John. “That was quite good.”

  “Are we finished here?” Orville said.

  “No,” said his father. “The book, then, is a game of trade. As the puppet master behind these economic exchanges, Anne Brontë herself must have had a motive. She put her story on paper; now, what was she going to get in return?”