Men and Angels

by Mary Gordon

  “If I were home I’d make you a tisane, tine infusion. Infusion. It always sounds so effective. So hydraulic. As if the best minds of the Industrial Revolution were behind it, so you’re bound to be all right. And yet it’s so wonderfully simple, not mechanical at all.”

  “My sister makes her own herb teas.”

  “Oh, my dear, those things right-minded people serve one now. Made of stewed Kleenex and ammonia. And the messages on the sides of the boxes. Nietzsche and George Eliot. It’s enough to drive one to Nescafé.”

  “I hope things will be quiet in the house. I told Laura to take the children out and keep them busy for the afternoon. There’s a lot I need your help with. The later diaries are in a very shaky hand.”

  She brought Jane into the study. Not having worked there for a week, Anne felt herself a stranger to it, a betrayer of the room. She smelled the beeswax polish Laura had used on the furniture. Her desk, Michael’s desk, shone with a dull rich glow. She rearranged some papers on it, quite unnecessarily. She took new pencils from the drawer and sharpened them; she adjusted the flexible neck of the desk lamp.

  “Here’s a passage from 1938 that I can’t make a thing of.”

  She handed Jane one of the notebooks. There were fifty-six of them, identical blue-covered books with inside pages mottled like a plover’s egg. Caroline used a new one for each year, she began a new one even if the old year’s was only a quarter full. A firm in Philadelphia made them specially for her. She began keeping a diary in 1884, when she was twenty, and continued until the year of her death fifty-four years later. Anne had been through all the books. A few days ago she had come to this entry, the last, made two weeks before Caroline’s death, and had not been able to read it.

  “Caroline loved notebooks, particularly these,” said Jane. “She loved good pens and fine paper. She used to say that an artist has as much obligation to address an envelope beautifully as she does to render justice to her most beloved model. She was vain of her handwriting, and contemptuous of her male peers who didn’t care about this kind of detail.”

  Anne smiled. She loved the notebooks too, the yellowish pages and the ink gone brown, the sense of physical intimacy that reading the careless handwriting, seeing the words crossed out and written over, the hasty marginalia, gave. Caroline’s was a beautiful hand, a formal hand, an artifact now. No one wrote beautifully anymore, unless their writing was deliberately, self-consciously anachronistic. Then they sent away for calligraphic pens and special inks. But they didn’t write that way for the butcher; if you found their laundry lists, the hand would be inevitably of the twentieth century, functional, forthcoming, plain.

  “I remember that day. October 18, 1939,” said Jane. “The doctor had just left her when she wrote this. She was very weak all the time by then. She knew she was dying. The doctor, a friend of her cousin’s, such a nice man, we all adored him, had told her when she asked him that she had at most a month. She wept. I was surprised, for she had known for some time that she was dying. When I told her I was surprised, she said, ‘It’s that I feel I’ve just been given an invitation to a wonderful party I know I’ll have to miss.’ She asked me to bring her the book. Look at the poor writing, how weak it is.” Jane patted the page as if it were a small, sick animal. “Of course you couldn’t read it. I can barely make it out. I’ll read it aloud, if I may.”

  “I have not been a good woman. Near death, I say this, knowing there is nothing I can do about it now. I have been a bad daughter. Indifferent to my mother, I did not mourn her death. My father died my enemy. I left my son to wither. I knew what he needed: warmth and care, and moist rich soil. And I left him in a stony place, a leafless place. He died still a boy. Rootless, unrooted. My friends are dead. I was a good friend to them if it didn’t cost me much. In old age I learned love. I have loved Jane. I have loved her above all people. Yet I swept her up, I kept her to me when I should have let her go. If she would follow me, I should have, like Naomi, led her to a husband. Instead I encouraged her affair with Ben, and kept her to me. What heaven can there be for someone who has lived as I have lived? The heaven of the kind, the just, will close itself to me, in kindness and in justice. I have loved beauty. I have loved above all the light on the water, a yellow pear in a blue bowl, a winter sky shot through with silver. Yet perhaps to earn an eternity of beauty one has had to live a life of goodness. So perhaps I will sit, weeping and shuddering, in eternal darkness. I am right to fear.”

  Tears were running down Jane’s cheeks as she finished reading. Anne, too, wept.

  “How I hate the word ‘goodness.’ What an obstacle it is to the moral life,” said Jane.

  “Do you find goodness and morality incompatible?” Anne asked.

  “Of course not. But the term ‘goodness’ has been so perverted, so corrupted, it now covers only two or three virtues when there are hundreds.”

  “Was Caroline a good woman?”

  “She was marvelous. What she said about herself was right. She was often unkind, impatient and unjust. She was terrifically self-absorbed. But she was loyal, honest and courageous. She was a great painter. She had only to open a door to make life come into a room. In her presence despair was impossible, depression the invention of the Russians or the English or someone in some country far from where you were.”

  “But what about Stephen?”

  “She was not a good mother. But she was a splendid human being. What an immense egoist she was. Imagining my love affair with Ben was her doing. We fell into bed before she’d time to catch her breath.”

  “And you’ve been lovers all these years?”

  “Does that shock you?”

  “No, it delights me.”

  “Of course, he was terribly in love with you.”

  “With me?”

  “Oh, yes, my dear. I’ve known about you for years. Since that summer in London when you were twenty. He asked me if I thought it would be frightfully immoral of him to marry you. I asked him if he wanted more children. He said no. I told him in that case it would be frightfully immoral.”

  “Jane, I’m astonished. What would you have done if we had married? Would you have gone on being his lover?”

  “No, of course not. Because if he’d married you it would have been a real marriage, and I’d never have interfered with that. So, naturally, it was in my interest to stop the match. Are you outraged?”

  “Of course not. You were perfectly right, and I’d probably have married him. I’d have been miserable deprived of children. It’s my ruling passion, maternity.”

  “I see that. But I’ve never felt it, although I love children passionately. It’s like a potato left out of the stew.”

  “I’ve always been amazed at how detached Ben is from his family. Have you ever met them?”

  “No, he’s kept us carefully separated for fifty years.”

  “What about his wife?”

  “Not a glimpse, not a word on the telephone. He never speaks of her. Of course I have my ideas. But Ben is loyal. Never a word against her. Or for her either, for that matter.”

  “I don’t understand that kind of marriage. What can it possibly mean?”

  “Ben is one of those men who need to be married because they need to live in a certain kind of house. But he has no genius for family life, that kind of man never does. His affective life is always outside it—as if he felt it unseemly to have strong emotions in the same place that he eats and sleeps and has his clothing.”

  The telephone rang, and Anne jumped. It was Lydia Garrison, the wife of the emeritus professor of economics, who lived in the house behind. “I hope I’m not interrupting something important.”

  “No, of course not,” Anne said, thinking it was impossible to tell the truth to someone who declared she hoped she was not interrupting.

  “I don’t want to sound like an old busybody, and doubtless I don’t know how people bring up their children these days, but I’m watching your children at this very minute. They’re playin
g on the ice on my pond. Not that I mind, they’re always welcome, they know that, I’ve told them that, but it’s just that I’m not sure the ice is firm enough to hold them. I didn’t go rushing down because they have an adult with them, their baby-sitter, I believe, and perhaps I’m wrong, perhaps the ice is firm enough, only I’m not quite sure.”

  “Thank you, Lydia. Thank you very much.”

  Anne hung up the phone and ran out of the house. The Garrisons’ pond was at the bottom of a steep slope five hundred yards from the Fosters’ house. She could get to it two ways: by running three blocks on pavement or by scrambling down the hill. The hill might be icy, but it would save time. She saw her children fallen through the ice, saw their eyes close on dark water, their mouths frozen, their limbs helpless to move. Running down the hill, she slipped twice, got up hurriedly, and cut the palm of her hand on a sharp stone. The pond came into view. The children were running on the ice; she could hear their laughter. The surface of the pond was slushy; she could see the prints their boots left on the quickly melting snow. As she rushed forward she imagined every minute she would see them going under. She would be punished for her lifetime of good fortune. She had always known she would have to pay for it one day, but it was too cruel, what might happen any moment before her eyes. Any moment she might see her children disappear. And she would dive in after them, perhaps losing them forever, perhaps rising to the surface wet and frozen, having left her children underneath. But she would not come up; she’d stay there too, stay with them always. It could not happen. She would get there; she would save them. She offered anything in place of the disaster that she might at any moment see: her own life, Michael’s life. She would be willing to live years a hopeless invalid, entirely impoverished, alone, or mad, if only her children could remain in her vision for a minute longer, if only for one more minute the surface would hold.

  She was at the shore of the pond. She knew she mustn’t cry out to the children or alarm them. They must walk slowly, steadily, the hundred feet to where she stood. She called their names. Peter looked toward her guiltily.

  “Are we in trouble for getting our clothes wet?”

  “No, of course not, sweetest. You’re not in any trouble at all. Just walk very slowly to me, very slowly. Make Sarah walk slowly, but don’t take her hand.”

  The intrusion of the ordinary was like a blow; here were her children, they were talking about misbehaving, about catching cold. They wouldn’t die before her eyes, their lives would go on and hers would; the horror had lifted, life had been breathed back. Her heart was beating terribly with the strain, which was like the last desperate burst of a runner’s heart, to keep her voice from screaming out.

  The children walked toward her, slowly, as she had told them. They reached the shore.

  “I was afraid we’d be in trouble,” said Peter. “We’re soaking wet. Our feet, our jeans, everything. But it’s not Sarah’s fault. It’s mine. I told her it was okay, even though I knew it really wasn’t. I knew we shouldn’t get wet on a day like this when we might catch cold.”

  “No, darling. It doesn’t matter that you got wet. What matters is that you are all right. You were in danger. You might have fallen through the ice.

  She suddenly remembered Laura. Rage rose up in her: a loud clatter of dark wings. The wings flew, blocked the light. They twisted, they became involved in a tremendous whirring circle. She heard nothing, could see nothing but a circle of confused wings, whirring horribly, and the sharp beak somewhere about to strike.

  “Did Laura say it was all right for you to go out on that ice? Where is she?”

  Peter pointed. “She’s sitting behind that rock reading. We asked her if it was okay, and she just smiled and nodded. I don’t think she was really paying attention. She was moving her lips while she was reading. I didn’t think grown-ups did that. Some of the kids in our class, in the C reading group, move their lips when they read, but they always get in trouble.”

  “You stay here. Don’t move,” she said to the children. She felt she must move away from them. She had become the wings, the beak; she could feel her body whirring, she could feel her limbs grow long and thin and pointed, ready to swoop, ready to strike. Her movement across the snow felt like a heavy flight. It took her only seconds to get to the rock where Laura sat.

  Laura looked up and smiled. “Hello, Anne,” she said, closing her Bible.

  “Laura, what are you doing here?” said Anne, keeping her fists clenched so she wouldn’t strike her.

  “I’m reading.”

  “Didn’t you see what the children were doing? Didn’t you see that they were on the pond and that the ice might not have held them? What were you doing here, letting them do something like that? What could you possibly have been thinking?” Her voice was a knife; she heard it and was pleased.

  “They’re all right, aren’t they?” asked Laura, still smiling.

  “Yes, Laura, at the moment they’re all right. But if someone who saw them hadn’t phoned me, they could both be dead.”

  Laura looked up at Anne, shielding her eyes from the sunlight. She smiled at Anne for several seconds. Anne waited for her to speak, but she said nothing.

  The desire to put her hands around Laura’s throat, to take one of the large rocks on the shore and smash her skull, to break the ice and hold her head under the water till she felt her life give out was as strong as any passion Anne had ever known. As strong as her love for her children, for her husband, stronger than the things that made the center of her life was her desire to inflict damage on the smiling face of this girl who might have let her children die.

  “I’m sorry, Laura, but you’ll have to leave. I don’t think I can trust you with the children. I’ll take them away for the evening. We’ll be home at nine. I want you gone by then, with all your things. Don’t leave anything behind you; I don’t want you to come into the house again.”

  Laura took her hands away from her eyes. She was still smiling. “All right, Anne, if that’s what you want.”

  “There’ll be a check for you on the counter. Two weeks’ salary,” she said, her back toward the girl.

  “Thank you, Anne,” she heard Laura say.

  “Wait here for ten minutes, Laura. Then start for the house. By the time you get there, we’ll be gone. I don’t want the children to see you.”

  She told the children to walk the three blocks of sidewalk; she would walk up the hill alone. Her steps were heavy, certain, long. She didn’t slip once, although the climb was steep and the ground icy. Her legs ached at the top of the hill. She was glad of that: the physical pain made her seem herself to herself, someone she recognized, still human. She was frightened by what she had felt. Like a figure of allegory she had become one quality, one vice. She had become entirely anger. She had felt herself close to killing. She might have killed. She thought of murderers; she knew now what, when he raised his hand, the murderer felt.

  When she got to the house the children were waiting for her, holding Jane’s hand, looking up at Anne in fear and confusion and sorrow. She must comfort them; she must show them she was the person she had always been, the person that they knew. She smiled at them and said as gently as she could, “Change out of your wet things, my darlings. We’re going to go out.”

  Eleven

  SHE HAD FAILED. ANNE did not love her. Anne’s heart had turned to stone. But why had Laura lost heart when God was with her? She was the favorite, the chosen of the Lord. And now her heart was once again within her. For the work of the Lord must be done through her, in violence, in desolation, for Anne’s heart had turned to stone within her and must be plucked out. “I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh,” Ezekiel said, the words of fire. The fire of love, love like a wind of violence, rushing, love the wind of fire. Oh, Anne, how beautiful is the face of the Lord. I will bring you His face, His face shall be before you in my hands.

  She had lost heart because she had thought the flesh was goi
ng to prevail, it would swallow up the spirit of the one she tried to save. Was she no match against the Prince of Darkness and his heavy cohort, flesh? She knew the heart of Anne. With eyes of love she pierced and saw a heart choked up with lust and anger. Anne had coveted the husband of another. She lay all night on her bed of thorns, lust was her bed, her rest, her solitude. The face of God must sweep it out, must leave behind a bare room stripped and sweet. Swept with the broom of fire. But Laura had lost heart. Because the heart of Anne had turned to stone, turned from her, turned against her. The hard heart became a sword to drive into the flesh of Laura, the Lord’s messenger, the chosen of the Lord. Who loved Anne as no one else could ever love her. Whose hands would bring the white face of the Lord, the shining face, the beautiful before the mountains.

  She had been careful, prudent, had not made mistakes as before. For the work of God she had practiced deceit. She read the word of God in private, or if she read in public, read casually; as others read the books they read, she read the Word of God. So there was nothing to alarm, to frighten, to reveal. She had been careful, and she kept the secret in her heart. She had said nothing when she saw that Anne desired the flesh of the man not her husband. Secretly in her room she had written the words she wanted to say, the warnings of the Lord, of blood, of fire. Hosea’s words. The Lord had made the prophet plead with the adulteress:

  That she put away her harlotry from her face,

  and her adultery from between her breasts;

  lest I strip her naked

  and make her as in the day she was born

  and make her like a wilderness,

  and set her like a parched land,

  and slay her with thirst.

  Upon her children also I will have no pity….

  When she first read that, when the Lord led her to read it, she wanted to run in to Anne, to wake her from her sleep, for it was night and dark. Only Laura was awake; the Lord had spoken in that night to Laura, spoke the warning and the truth. She wanted to wake Anne and say the words the Lord had shown her. Do you want this, is this what you want, she imagined herself saying, pulling Anne’s blankets from her, shining the light in her eyes, giving her God’s message in the cold night. This is what awaits you if you follow in the path you want to walk. If you put your flesh beside the flesh of this man who is not your husband, but another’s. Is this what you want, a wilderness, a dry land and your children cursed? Turn away, listen to me. I can keep you from this. I will lead you from the desert to the cooling spring. Your garments will be white as snow. Your face will shine like the sun. Your heart will soar above you. Turn, turn from your sin to me. I will lead you from the path of thorns into the path of righteousness. I am the messenger of the Lord. I will show you his face in my hands.