Pinkerton's Sister

by Peter Rushforth

  Papa’s “friend” began to whistle again, and threw her across to Papa.

  …Gone are the cares of life’s busy throng,

  Beautiful dreamer, awake unto me …

  Papa immediately threw her back, given something he did not want.

  …Beautiful dreamer, awake unto me …

  “When the music stops …!”

  Papa’s “friend” pulled off her second shoe, and threw her straight back. They were becoming clumsier in the way they were throwing her. It did not matter if she should fall, if she did not remain upright, and it was beginning to happen more and more quickly. She was to be hurtled across a white line, part of a pattern painted on grass, a smear of grass-stains and whitewash down the whole length of her body, an object being used in order to win a game with strict predetermined rules. Somewhere, faint in the distance, an unseen crowd roared encouragement to the players. There would be the shrill sound of a blast on a whistle, an infringement of the rules detected by an alert referee, and someone would start booing. She was feeling giddy, her vision blurred, her sense of direction lost. It was like the time on the roundabout when she had been sick, and Mama had held her, patting her back, whispering words of comfort because she was crying.

  She was not crying now. She did not protest, did not utter a word.

  Surreptitiously, Papa’s “friend” touched her face lingeringly, caressingly, like someone attempting to make out the profile of a queen or a president on the heads side of a newly minted coin, recognizing the person depicted solely by touch. She had become a coin like the coin on Papa’s watch-chain, a small unit of currency.

  It happened this particular night, and then it happened every time he came, and he came often.

  Something made her feel that she ought to become still, silent, make herself invisible, weightless, not really there at all.

  8

  It was what she learned to do in the weeks that followed, when Papa’s “friend” began to sit her down upon his knee. He just held her, very still, very close, seeming to freeze, and hold his breath. When Papa left the room – he had started to leave the room, click, click, click across the hall to his study on the opposite side, another click as he closed the door behind him – she felt that she was on the edge of a vertiginous drop, poised like the statues of the watching women on the ledges of Grandpapa’s office, waiting for their men to return from the sea.

  She had seen the backs of some of them from Grandpapa’s windows, as new and unweathered as if they were standing in Carlo Fiorelli’s workshop. Penelope was to the right of the biggest window facing onto South Street, and, even though it could not be seen from the street, the back – the tumbling hair and falling folds – was as fully detailed as the front, like the figures high in the roof of a mediæval cathedral, invisible to the human eye far below, finished on all sides because God could see everything.

  God could see everything.

  She, too, held her breath, in case Papa’s “friend,” in case she herself, might somehow forget that she was there. If she should move, she felt, she would fall, turning over and over to smash upon the ground.

  “You’re one of the girls from the statue,” he whispered.

  That was all he said, and he said it every time, the necessary words of a ritual, like a password that promised reward.

  She imagined Papa in his study, the room on the other side of the front door, bent over lists of numbers and symbols – dollar signs, pluses and minuses – bent over the close-written papers with tiny writing. He was like a clerk totting up his totals in a banking hall, adding up the same numbers over and over in order to arrive at the same answer each time. There was no money in the study, just records of where it had been, where it was going. Discreetly, he bent certain fingers slightly over, or sketched downward strokes – like the beginnings of a matchstick figure – in tight symmetrical blocks like the markings-off of the days of an imprisonment, as he calculated in all the redness of the ink.

  She let herself become stone, become bronze, become her own figure in The Children’s Hour, the blind-eyed girl. Each time Papa’s “friend” came into the house, he would sit with her upon his knee in the front parlor, like a man waiting for something, and Papa would leave the room, click, click, click to his study, click as the door closed. It always, she came to realize, lasted for exactly an hour, like something that had been paid for, like – later – her fifty-five minutes with Dr. Wolcott Ascharm Webster on Ash Wednesdays.

  At first she had felt that she might be expected to say something – the silences seemed awkward, impolite, the frigid emptinesses of one of the more unsuccessful afternoons at Mrs. Albert Comstock’s (there were plenty of these) – but she had somehow sensed that silence was all that was expected, even though the silences had become difficult to endure. She would spoil it – though she wasn’t sure what it was – if she spoke. She sat, stone, bronze, unmoving, unspeaking, listening to the hiss of the gaslights if it was in darkness, or the sound of Celia Iandoli practicing her piano-playing, or the fluttering wings of a trapped butterfly, if it was daylight, wanting to pick it up in her cupped hands and release it from an opened window. If you rubbed the dust from its wings it would die.

  She must not speak for this one hour.

  She must not move.

  She must not think anything, or feel anything.

  The hour would pass.

  Sometimes Papa came in and sat beside them, angled slightly inward, and the silence continued, this time with the slight wheeze of Papa’s breathing, the suffocating smell of just-smoked cigars.

  “You’re one of the girls from the statue.”

  9

  There was another particular night.

  By now it was late in the summer, or early fall; it was growing darker earlier, and some of the nights were cold. She must have imagined the sound of the butterfly’s wings. It had been too late in the year for that, not high summer, unless she’d heard one of the last survivors, living a little while longer in the warmth indoors, fluttering its wings as it slowly died. Sometimes, quite late in the year, she’d be surprised by the faint whirring sound, the slow, struggle to return to life of something she had imagined long dead. It was still the time before fires were set every day, but she sometimes awoke in the middle of the night because of an unexpected coldness, shivering under the inadequate coverings upon her bed. This night, however, was the end of a day that had been warm. It was another full moon, another night when the wind was blowing, another night in the front parlor with Papa and Papa’s “friend.”

  The gas-lamp outside had been lighted a short while before. We are very lucky, with a lamp before the door. She had sat with her head back, watching the lamplighter climb up the ladder above her, Dr. Vaniah Odom mounting up to sway in his pulpit on his tower of hymnbooks.

  “I see hell!” he would declaim, staring into the flame as he lighted it, and it bloomed purply-white, illuminating his face like a pumpkin lighted from inside.

  O Leerie, see a little child and nod to her tonight.

  It was time to begin.

  “Pass the Parcel!” Papa’s “friend” said, matter-of-fact now, confident. The first time he’d said it, it had almost been a question, though there had been no question mark, no upward inflexion of the voice. It was not a question now. He sounded like a man ordering his favorite dish from the menu in a restaurant, his little treat to himself after a week of toiling. She saw herself in the ice-cream parlor with a tall glass towering in front of her, taller than she was as she sat down. She had a long thin spoon, long enough to reach to the very bottom of the glass, as silvery and narrow as a dueling weapon. From above, like threatening thunder, she could hear the feet of Mary Benedict, of Myrtle Comstock, of all the girls in the ballet class as they leaped up and down, as they spun and galumphily glissaded. The voice of the ballet teacher – a Madame something, another of the all-conquering Mesdames – was shouting with a metronomic incantation. Thud! Thud! Thud! Myrtle Comstock hit the floorboards
like an ill-tempered avalanche. Thud! Thud! Thud! (“That’ll show you!” she was grunting. “That’ll teach you a lesson.” For Myrtle Comstock, ballet was an advanced martial technique.) Alice shut out all sound, and concentrated on the frosted surface of the glass, the dark cherries like lips poised for kissing, the ice cream still solid, still preserving the shape of the scoop. She was prolonging the moment before she started, a delicious delay before she began to dip into the whipped cream, slowly, the little strands of dark chocolate that crunched between the teeth and melted in the mouth.

  Again there was that smell of smoke and cinders. They belonged near flames, and ashes were upon their heads, pattering down. They were trapped in Pompeii, or Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham had asked the LORD if he would destroy the righteous with the wicked. He was but dust and ashes. Two angels came to Sodom at even, and Lot rose up to meet them, and bowed himself with his face toward the ground. The LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven; and he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground. But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.

  Alice imagined wet, slurping tongues licking her lingeringly, as if she were a Savory Special from Comstock’s Comestibles, with a yum-yum taste to her flesh. (The weapon-like spoon made its first foray into the cream and chocolate. You had to be careful, or melting ice cream would overflow, and run in thin rivulets down the outside of the glass.)

  The smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace. Lot went to dwell in a cave with his two daughters. There was not a man in the earth to come unto the daughters after the manner of all the earth. They made their father drink wine that night.

  Alice – recklessly revealing that she had been surreptitiously browsing through the Bible in Sunday-school when she was supposed to be listening to a discussion of how sweet Little Baby Jesus was – had asked Miss Augusteena what this curious story meant, Lot behaving like a tippling caveman as his daughters poured booze into him. A cave and wine seemed such a curious combination. You’d have expected gin or beer. Miss Augusteena had come over all pink and confused in a mother’s-womb-untimely-ripp’d sort of way (imagine the expression on Miss Swanstrom’s face if that passage had been printed in their edition of Macbeth!), and ignored the question. “Little Baby Jesus! Little Baby Jesus!” she repeated, desperately, bouncing her brother’s baby up and down on her knee vigorously until all his features blurred. She’d pilfered Dixon Augusteena – a particularly annoyed, truculent-looking infant who deeply resented being kidnapped – to add a little winsomeness to her teachings, and all the girls had cooed. Loud sentimental sighs drowned Alice’s insistent questioning. Why did they make their father drink wine?

  Alice thought that she felt grit against her cheeks from the two men’s clothes, and imagined dirt streaks down her face.

  …Beautiful dreamer, out on the sea

  Mermaids are chaunting the wild Lorelei;

  Over the streamlet vapors are borne,

  Waiting to fade at the bright coming morn …

  Annie had come into the room.

  She was watching them, unseen by the men, from the doorway. Alice had not told her about Papa’s “friend,” and she felt embarrassed that she should see what she was seeing. She felt foolish.

  Annie said something to Papa. It might have just been his name, but there was a sharpness in the way she spoke that made Alice hold her breath. The words of the song went from her mind. There had been something different in the way that Annie looked at Papa in recent weeks, the way she held herself when he looked at her. Alice had seen him, some mornings, some evenings, looking at her as she polished the furniture or scrubbed the floor. As the time for the birth of the new baby came closer, Mama spent longer and longer in her room, with the drapes drawn, like someone ill. Having a baby was an illness, something that wasn’t talked about. Mama seemed not to be around so much to speak to Annie, and Papa had watched Annie, checking – so it appeared – that she completed her given tasks satisfactorily.

  Something had changed; something gone away or something come closer. Annie would never have dared to speak to Papa like that – it was the tone of voice, not the words used – only a few weeks previously, when the earlier darkness of the evenings was still taking people by surprise. Annie had polished and scrubbed, polished and scrubbed, so that – by concentrating on removing every fingerprint, making every surface shine, removing all the evidence from the scene of some crime – she could somehow avoid having to look at Papa.

  Annie came right into the room, up closer to them.

  Papa’s “friend” had just said, “When the music stops …!” and they were all standing still, in silence. It was like a game of Statues. You froze in position when the music stopped, in some exaggerated Reynolds Templeton Seabright posture, and the first person to move – however slightly – lost the game. Whenever he said, “When the music stops …!” she kept on singing the words of the song inside her head, so that the music did not really stop, as if by doing this she could prevent there being a silence.

  …Beautiful dreamer, beam on my heart,

  E’en as the morn on the streamlet and sea;

  Then will all clouds of sorrow depart …

  Annie walked right up to Papa’s “friend,” and held out her hands, to take Alice away from him. She wasn’t that much bigger than Alice herself, but she held out her hands with the intention of taking her in her arms, and carrying her away with her. Her hands were held out only a small distance away, the fingers splayed out like someone expressing grief, an unspoken demand. They were the hands Alice had watched raking up ashes, polishing cutlery, holding out the material of a skirt in a curtsy.

  The two men stood motionless for the longest time, the wind louder in the silence, a loose pane rattling, the hems of the curtains slowly swaying backward and forward, hissing against the floor, the sound of women hurrying into or out of a room, their skirts dragging. The thing that surprised Alice the most was not that Annie had said something, but that Papa had said nothing in reply.

  When Papa’s “friend” made no move to hand her over to Annie, Annie said something again – it was something polite, something conciliatory, she said “Please,” she said “sir” – and began to move forward. Papa’s “friend” made a clumsy sideways movement, hunching around with the top half of his body, his arms tightening around Alice, like a spoiled child refusing to show something he wanted to keep all for himself, like Sobriety Goodchild with his new baseball bat, that only he could hold, only he could use. Annie spoke yet again – “Please, sir …” she said – holding out her hands like a suppliant, and Alice felt the tips of her fingers beginning to grasp the top of her arms. She had to reach up, on tiptoe, she was so small. Alice began to turn around to face her, to reach out her own hands.

  Then Papa spoke. He said something to Annie, something short and coarse, something that made his “friend” laugh loudly. The “friend,” still laughing, with a spiteful little movement like a brat stamping his foot, petulantly threw the shoe he had just removed from Alice at Annie’s face. With equal eagerness he would willingly have cast the first stone at anyone who happened to be around, aiming very carefully for the head. This was a shoe with a buckle. It made a little Christmassy jingling sound, and cut Annie just below the eye.

  She continued to hold out her hands.

  “Please, sir …”

  10

  They were outside the house, in the windy moonlight, walking in the darkness between the flickering pools of gaslight. It was a surprisingly mild night for early fall, though the wind had a sharp edge to it. This must have been on the same night, because it was the night of a full moon.

  What happened that night happened again and again over the next few months. There was not enough time left to wait another month for the next full moon, because it started to become too cold to go out. There was a gap for a time, and she thought it
had finished, but it started again in the spring. What happened was always the same.

  The full moon was very large and very bright, and seemed to grow in size, its light becoming more intense – heavy, oppressive, catching stiflingly in the throat like pale floating thistledown, or the pollen of heavily scented lilies – as they moved out of Chestnut Street, down Chestnut Hill, and along Rivers Street, away from all the lighted streets, and down toward the far side of the park. Her shoes had not been put back on her, and she was not wearing her new winter coat – Mama was always most scrupulous in dressing her up warmly when she went outside in the colder weather: her coat, gloves, scarf, hat – but Papa had his arms tightly around her. He was carrying her now, not his “friend,” holding her against him, with her legs wrapped around him, to keep her warm by the nearness of his body, carrying her upstairs to her room. Annie was walking beside them, her hand reaching up and touching Alice’s back, to let her know that she was there. Papa’s “friend” was on the other side of Papa, whistling again, waiting for the moment when the music would stop.

  “Beautiful dreamer,” Alice sang inside herself, “wake unto me.”

  The music would not stop; she’d keep the music from stopping, keep it inside her. Though she was not beautiful, she felt she was the dreamer; motion seemed dreamlike, slow and underwater in the heavy light.