He turned back to her. She clapped her hands together. “Jane,” he said softly. “They must have cost you a fortune to recover.”
“Every last penny I had. But I had no choice. You know that, Charlie.”
“But what will you live on?”
She didn’t answer him, but began to smile. The wider she smiled the paler she appeared to become, as if that thin-lipped smile required all her energy. “You must see, Charlie,” she said. “All the things that have returned. All the major things, they’re all home now.”
She lifted her hem delicately and led him where he knew the parlor to be, the sitting-room where he had always waited for her.
He looked around the parlor in some bewilderment. It had become a veritable warehouse of antique furnishings. Love seats and short sofas were arranged seat-to-back on both sides of the room. Two weathered sideboards were stacked one atop the other blocking a window. He could feel the overlappings of several layers of rug beneath his feet, and near the edges of the room he could see the edges peeled back: red, blue, grey, and a bottom rug so dingy as to be colorless. Five dead chandeliers hung on hooks from the ceiling beside one of more recent vintage, still alive and now burning fiercely against the darkness created by several drapings of curtain over the windows. Three ancient clocks and a gallery of pictures covered the remaining wall space. The remainder of the floor was furnished with an assortment of small occasional tables, leaving only a narrow snake’s-trail for walking. By his left arm teetered three round tables, one atop the other. Jane stepped beside the leaning tower and he automatically reached to pull her from the danger.
“I’ve never been able to determine which of the three was ours. My mother’s, I mean.” She stepped away from his offered hand, closer to the stacked tables. Charlie held his breath and lowered his hand. “It was the only thing her own father let her take from her room when she married into the Elders. He didn’t approve, you see, thinking my father’s family—that they were all criminals. And I suppose …” She stopped talking, staring up at the tables. “I knew one of these tables was the correct one, but they are so close, I had to acquire all three.”
Charlie was relieved as she led him from the room. But he soon discovered that the other parts of the house offered no greater safety. Furniture of many periods was stacked three and four high in virtually every room. Queen Anne rubbed arm rests with Hepplewhite and Sheraton. American Empire sofas provided soft bedding for Chippendale kettle-base pieces. Ponderous Early Victorian tables bore pyramids of side chairs and ottomans and ornate chests which reached almost to the ceiling. Charlie stepped carefully wherever he went, acutely nervous of imminent collapse. Only the entrance hall remained relatively uncluttered, as traditionally the Elders had kept no furniture there.
“All this …” he began, but could say no more.
“All the furniture that’s ever been in this house, all that’s ever been sold or stored and forgotten, save a few unimportant pieces lost in a warehouse fire. All of it returned home. My family has always kept excellent records of things sold or given away, but even then it has taken me my lifetime to call them all back home.”
“The expense …”
“Has been enormous, of course. There have been many sacrifices—the search has quite ruined me. But it had to be done.”
“But Jane, why?”
“Even the small items, the knick-knacks, the decorative pieces, the pictures. I believe I have recovered most of them now. At the very least all those with memories attached, my memories, me, Charlie. Some nights I would stay awake until dawn, going back through the years until my birth, searching the house of my memory, the house in my memory, for items I might have forgotten, items I had played with, seen my family with, anything which might have made this house what it once was, my home. Once I found something in a dream or an excavated memory I would add it to my list, Charlie, and it became a very long list indeed. But now that list has dwindled. There is only one item left—the lions—and today will see their restoration.”
As she spoke Charlie was compelled by the fierceness of her mouth, the bright sheen of her eyes, to look away, and to peer again through the jumble and maze of memory the Elder house had become. The knick-knacks and ornamentations she spoke of—the pictures, the figures, the baubles, the lost toys, the missing pieces, the parts of something else again—littered the walls, lay scattered across the dusty, level surfaces, and swirled around the countless legs of furniture like stray thoughts let loose irresponsibly to torment the house and all who walked there.
He thought of the clutter at his parents’ unoccupied dwelling at Goode Farm and the slightly more organized disarray of his own home and felt a vague fatigue. “But how can you live in this?” He searched for her eyes in the pale face he suddenly only half-remembered, but she seemed to be looking for something far beyond him.
“I just wanted you to be here when they arrived, Charlie. You’re the oldest of my friends. In fact, you’re the last of my friends.”
“These lions …”
“When they all arrive,” she said dreamily. “I just want you here when they all return.”
She made a place for the two of them in the parlor, removing several boxes of doilies, small pictures, and porcelain figurines from two elegant Queen Anne chairs. Normally Charlie would have at least surreptitiously examined the contents of each box before it was removed, but he found his attention taken instead by the way she moved, how cold her skin appeared, how incredibly detailed her life had become.
She brought him tea on a tray which looked vaguely familiar. After a few sips of the too-bitter liquid he became convinced it was the same tray and cups she had used when he first courted her so many years before.
“Any minute now,” she said quietly, sipping at her cup. “Any minute now they shall return.”
He heard a vehicle pull up in the street outside, footsteps, then the sounds of a metal truck gate rising, followed by the wooden creak of Jane Elder’s front gate. Jane’s face had a far-off, dreamy look. She took another sip of tea and Charlie thought her face momentarily softened, as if losing focus.
He could hear the soft grunt of distant exertion, heavy steps, then a muffled thud. Moments later the sounds repeated themselves, as if recorded and played back. In Jane’s face, he could see that these vague sounds would repeat for her many times over the years to come. The truck departed. Jane sighed and slumped back, as if collapsing.
“Jane.” He reached over and felt her cool cheek. It was soft as the schoolgirl’s he had once known.
She opened her eyes. “They have returned,” she said weakly. She looked around her. “Do you see, Charlie? They have all come back home.”
He could not resist raising and turning his head. For just a moment the parlor seemed uncluttered, the furniture appearing to blend, the pieces collapsing one into another as if to establish a single, timeless design. But then just as suddenly the shadows of countless years of furnishings swept back into view, darkening the room and confusing the eye. He looked back into her face. And he could see the complicating shadows there as well, and he was alarmed at suddenly how old she had become, how old all of them had become.
And at all the clutter they had permitted to accumulate in their lives.
“They’re here!” she cried, eyes wide with what he might have called a “youthful” excitement. “Can’t you hear them?” Then she sprang to her feet and ran through the maze of furniture towards the front hall. Charlie could only stare after her, surprised at the amount of noise her feet made on the carpeted floor, a rumble as of distant lions.
Then there were the party sounds, the muffled roar of male laughter. He thought he recognized two of her uncles. Then a distant foolish little Jane, the commanding voice of her father.
He stood and made his way carefully through the stacks of furniture in the parlor, the hall, and room after room on the bottom floor of the house. He hadn’t Jane’s courage to move so swiftly—the precarious stacks appear
ed ready to collapse at any moment. In distant parts of the Elder sprawl he thought this might already be happening: he could hear the muffled roar, as of ancient air escaping explosively from a freshly opened tomb.
He stopped at a window and peered out at the front lawn. The lions rested in their designated spots, wrapped in shadow. They were smaller than he remembered.
On the top floor he found a room lined with dresses—he recognized many of them as Jane’s mother’s from many years ago. He couldn’t imagine how Jane had been able to track them all down. He half expected Jane’s mother to walk in at any moment, reprimanding him for being in her bedroom and not downstairs in the “public” parlor where a proper suitor belonged.
He glimpsed the plum-colored cloth among a mass of gowns at the back of the room. As he approached it he could feel Jane’s warmth filling it, her softness reaching out through its arms. But when he reached the plum-colored dress decorated in silver brocade it was empty. He lifted the cloth—furry dust filled the absent torso. Shadows swelled the absent arms. He reached his arm around the dress as if to embrace, as if to waltz, but stopped. This party, this dance has moved elsewhere, he thought. Neither Jane nor Elder House bothered to confirm or deny.
When Bobby picked him up at the end of the four hours, he had a jar of the pink milk waiting for him. “Sweet Alice’s Love, Granddad,” Bobby said as he handed it to him.
Charlie leaned across to hug Bobby, then moved his shoulders in a waltzing movement, chuckling at his grandson’s startled expression. Then he leaned back and raised the jar in a toast. “To absent friends and loved ones,” he said, and permitted his grandson’s smile to fill him.
Goode Farm
Charlie kept dialing. His daughter’s line was still busy. Outside, ice fingers scraped the living room window, but every time he turned nothing was there. Just the dark edge of a shadow in rapid transition, momentarily and vaguely perceived. The busy signal was a hollow sound, echoing through some vast empty belly of communications. Charlie held his thumb over the telephone’s cradle button. He turned quickly and saw the sharp profile against the icy pane before it passed again, intent on its stalking of the house. He thought he saw the awful hook of the nose, the sharp point that might have been a horn. Needle teeth, or was that simply the tiny icicles, frozen against the pane?
He lifted his thumb and dialed. Again the hollow buzz. No doubt she was trying to call him at home. She would never have expected to find him here, at the old homeplace. He hadn’t been here in years. No one had lived here in eight, nine years. Even though he still paid for the phone, the heat, the lights. Just in case.
Who do you expect to call? It seemed as if his daughter asked that during every conversation. She thought he had lost his senses; perhaps he had. His sister Ellen had not called, had not told him she was ailing, had not even invited him home for Christmas. She had been the last one to live in the old Goode farmhouse, and he had just shown up unannounced.
He had found Ellen propped up in bed that Christmas morning, staring at the ice patterns in the window as if seriously attempting to decipher them. Nineteen seventy-eight. Ten years. That long ago.
Another shadow passed the window. This time Charlie did not bother to turn around. He heard the icy tap on the glass, the rustle of a paper studied and studied again, the soft laughter but barely suppressed within the broad face of bright red. There was no need to turn around.
The heavy fall of snow was beginning to break up, dissolving into a white mist made brilliant by the final, more determined rays of the sun. The farmyard—littered with agricultural machinery, ancient kitchen appliances, iron bedposts and railings, stained wooden crates containing one family’s miscellaneous artefacts—was slowly blanketed, his rusted childhood topographies momentarily obscured. But still there, Charlie Goode reminded himself, always there.
He had a sudden vision of an archaeologist’s excavation, one of the amateur digs he had been on over the years. But this was a dream excavation, the earth suddenly no heavier than snow, so easily removed to reveal what lay within. He could see himself as a child, digging through the snow, removing it a layer at a time, and, finally, finding the dead body of the calf he had been raising that year, frozen to the ground, its green eyes crystal. He had grown up obsessed with looking under things, trying to find out secrets, driven to reveal every hidden corpse. Finally his call went through. The ringing was another hollow sound, as if an impossible distance away. Charlie ignored the sharp tapping on the glass behind him.
The connection was a bad one, his daughter’s voice clouded, hoarse, cold. At least, he wanted to pretend that the ragged connection explained the distance in Marie’s soft, short sentences.
“I’m afraid there was just too much snow,” he said again, as if to convince her through repetition. “I will probably be stuck out here for days.” Then, “You two are the only ones who know I’m out here.” No doubt his daughter was considering that with some pleasure, thinking he might starve out on the old farm, with no neighbors for miles, and if the phone lines went down … “It was a good thing I was bringing food over to your house,” he added quickly. “No chance of starvation.” He made a strained chuckling sound.
“Of course. A very good thing.” His daughter’s voice dropped, as if suddenly smothered. Charlie imagined miles of telephone line swallowed up by an infinite white snake of ice and snow, their voices wandering the length of its belly. He pressed the receiver to his ear so firmly it hurt, but still he could barely hear her. The cold, whistling air smothered her voice.
He asked her about any news, how his grandson Robert was doing. She apparently heard him; he could hear the murmured drone across the line, but he failed to recognize most of the words.
He had plenty of time to visit his daughter these days, although he seldom did. He had “professionally retired” himself from his teaching position. Although he had liked, perhaps even admired, children, he had felt temperamentally incapable of instructing them. The world had developed a new and faster pace with which he could never be comfortable. His world lay somewhere else, beneath layers of dust or earth. Now he occupied himself collecting things—antiques, Civil War memorabilia, Indian artefacts; exploring ancient campsites; making headstone rubbings. His habitual reticence was broken only in those few social occasions in which he felt it necessary to express his determined ignorance of contemporary literature, newspapers, and television. He took great satisfaction in finding things which had been lost, but which no one else had any desire whatsoever to find. He remained perennially restless, and yet was restless for nothing.
He had convinced himself that this house held no more meaning for him than all the other ruins he had passed through during his life’s observations. He had been a fool. The sharp nails on the window, the rustle of paper and dark flowing robes, told him so.
The murmuring at the other end of the line apparently had stopped. “Merry Christmas, d—Marie.” He had thought to say “darling”, but it would have made her even angrier. “Perhaps I can get out of here by the New Year.”
“Don’t. Bother.”
The words were so distorted, so ethereal, he felt safe to pretend. “I can’t rightly hear you, Marie. Better put that grandson of mine on before we lose this connection entirely.”
A sharp clunk as the receiver dropped on its cord, rebounded, and bounced once against the wall. Ever since she was a teenager, Marie had done that when she was mad.
Charlie had never understood how someone like himself, who had been a child and still remembered so vividly being a child, could do so badly with children.
He risked peering around at the window behind him. Out where blowing snow chased after the darkness, he almost expected to see his mother angrily chasing his father away from her children, as she had so many Christmases ago, in anger and madness gone raving into the drifts and the night.
He had lived long enough to realize that sometimes an absence evolved into a presence. Thoughts which had never been spoken, a
ctions dreamed but not done, all the shortcomings and late hours and ill-timings in a life sometimes demanded form, and walked.
His hand caressed the receiver. All Charlie could think about was apologizing. For everything.
“Granddad, it’s Robert. What’s wrong with Mom?”
Charlie Goode sighed. “I can’t be there for Christmas, again.”
“The snow?”
“I stopped by the old farmhouse yesterday afternoon. Just—I’m not sure why—I hadn’t been here for over two years and I was thinking about the season and—before I knew it there was a good three feet of snow about the house. It must have taken hours to accumulate such an amount. I don’t even know what I was doing all that time—perhaps I’m growing senile—I’m sure that must be what your mother thinks. Three feet, Bobby! And I did not even notice that it was snowing!”
“Granddad. Well, she is pretty angry.”
“I have always had quite a talent for making your mother angry.”
“Oh, she’ll be okay. It’s just that sometimes when something happens to change your plans she thinks you did it on purpose.”
“I broke promises to her, Bobby. I broke promises all the time. I did not mean to, but I still did. I was simply too much inside my own head. Your grandmother was the good parent. I just never had that particular talent.”
“You’re fine with me.”
“I have never had opportunity or cause to argue with you, Bobby. Parents have to argue with their children at times, and yet must be able to preserve a relationship during those disagreements. I was never able to do that. And Christmas, the holidays were the worst. I was never good for her at Christmas time. I never knew how to give her what she needed.”
Absent Company Page 38