On Keeping Women

by Hortense Calisher

  Digging in the old U-pipe, he whistled; the commune always cheered him. Last time there, the girls had been spouting Teilhard de Chardin. Which was not—they said haughtily—religion. Stirring the polenta, they were. Pretty as polenta-machines, all of them. He was just in, fresh and hardy, from his books. “No, more like intellectual perfume,” he’d said. “You can dab it behind your ears.” They’d squawked at him. Little tape-recorders, their soft arms covered with flesh pink as bubble-gum. If they all hated their families, why were they living in what they prated as an “extended” one? He could see them around the same table three years from now, with all the babies—one was already sneaking from behind the pills—reading Emerson.

  He laughed out loud and dropped the wrench.

  Royal comes out and down the hall, on his hod foot. That rhythm is enough to impress quiet on them. He never has to waste words. He’ll have some competence Charles and Maureen don’t. Or analysis.

  Older than he, they wait, silent. He has to have it.

  He leans over the toilet. “How long those been in there?” He picks, delicately.

  “Ick.” Maureen.

  “Must you?” Charles stands up. “She was tired when she went to bed, that’s all. Depressed.”

  “That kind of blood. Menstrual blood. I’ve never seen it.”

  “Bide your time then. Or ask James.” Charles picked up the wrench. “Stick to earwax. And shut your mouth.”

  “What do you bet it’s not that kind of blood.” Roy’s eyes are bright. “Fools.”

  All three heads swivel. As if on the same neck. Their mother’s often commented on it.

  Chessie’s door was still closed. It breathed closure. The two boys turned to Maureen.

  “Oh Lordy.” But she knows her duty. As more than sister. As female guardian of the secretions of the house. Cautiously she opened Chess’ door.

  Empty. Not slept in? Who knows? Chess’ bed is never made. On the bed is a large leather folder, shining new. Charles draws nearer, to the other object.

  “What is it?” Maureen whispers. “Where’d she get it?”

  “An astrolabe.” Yearning, he picks it up.

  Underneath, scattered on the sheet, some bright metal bits.

  “Oh,” Reeny says. “Oh what a shame … Earrings … Oh—they were beautiful.”

  Royal’s their leader. Though Charles forges ahead of him. Up the tower steps.

  The tower’s full of light now, straining through the high fracture of the trees. Chess is sitting madonna-still, on the up-ended bucket. She’s wearing a tee shirt with the sleeves pushed up, and khaki shorts. Her long showgirl legs are twined. Her hands are palm-down in her lap, clasped tight. When Royal pries them open the handled razorblade falls to the floor. The bloodsoaked pad in her lap remains. The wrists haven’t been slashed, but hairline-sliced. What oozing there was has stopped. A few drops are on some paperscraps near the blade.

  She must have stroked so delicately. Teasing the blood out from the skin. Daring the vein. Waiting for them to find her? Or not?

  “It’s already healing,” Royal says. “Quick, get my kit.”

  Maureen’s already running for it.

  The kit is Royal’s pride. “No time to prep. But the glove-pak is sterile.” He works nimbly, taught by Ray, and such practice as he himself can find. “Oh, let me” he’s said to their kneescabs since he was five. When Ray services the Little League’s injuries for free, he goes along. And more than once in hard-pressed emergency rooms—as he’d gleefully reported—a little lame patient wandering in from the wards hadn’t been noticed until too late. Don’t look, they said to him.

  No one here to say that.

  The wound in Chess’ wrist is already a jellying seam, puckering fast against the enemy. Royal, finished with it, turns up the other wrist, to show a seam identical.

  A mewl comes from Reeny. Charles’ throat is grateful to hers. While Royal repeats his routine on the other wrist, Chess herself doesn’t make a sound. Doesn’t move, or look at them. Yet Charles can never quite believe she’s tranced. Not that she’s sly, or pretending. Somewhere he can feel consciousness, maybe bleeding too.

  She’s bandaged. White handcuffs. Royal fingers them, longer than a doctor would. “She’ll have to have a tetanus-shot,” he says, proud. “But it’s okay.”

  “We can take her to Doc Bly—can’t we? She can wear her longsleeved blouse. We can say she stepped on a nail. Can’t we?” Maureen is testing. Not only them. She leans toward Chess. “Later on, I can lend you my copper bracelets. She’ll be healed enough for them to cover, won’t she, Roy?” She almost touches her sister, her arm, just in time drawing back. “I’ll give them to you, Chess.”

  Who does Maureen remind him of? Their mother. Lexie, pleading with normalcy behind Chess’ back, forever tidying up behind her. Trembling, at what she sees otherwise. Casting Chess loudly for all to hear, as that scruffy early heroine, herself. Challenging fate to contradict her, beating it by a hair.

  Until now.

  Out there on the riverbank somewhere, is his mother, moving her legs to a man’s. Soon she’ll be walking them back in here. He pities her.

  And admires her. Both of which she knows. Sometimes flaunting it—casting him. “Fight me,” she’d said, stunned, after she’d slapped him. “Be me. Don’t back off, like your father. And don’t be sorry for it.”

  But Chess, who hasn’t moved, has them all in the palm of her hand. Between those wrists.

  Except for Royal.

  He’s repacking his kit tenderly, each bottle and tube, keeping out only the probe and scissors which will have to be sterilized again, and the used gloves and roll of gauze. “No way,” he says, looking up. Clasping his kit to his belly like a skilled workman called in, and now dismissing them. “No way.” Maureen won’t look at him. Will brother Charles grant him that satisfaction? Yes, he can always count on Charles. On all of them really. “Give up. She has to go.”

  The air in the tower creaks like glass wiped. It’s the trees, scratching. Not wanting in here surely. But it’s morning.

  Royal screws up his eyes. “I could tell Ma for you, if you want. When she comes in.”

  Maureen’s bending to Chess. “Sis. Say you’ll be all right. Say it.” Her hands accidentally graze the wrists. Head hanging, she stands up. Her eyes are streaming. “Where Lexie worked that time, they stamp their clothes. All the kids’ clothes, underwear, even. And when they go home for a weekend, they’re still wearing them.”

  Royal is walking over to Chess. When he walks slowly, that compensating hip takes one’s eye. He stands in front of her, staring. “Like my rabbit. Remember? Just like him. It’s fright, James says. But there’s another name for it. See?” Before they comprehend, he’s passing the probe back and forth, back and forth in front of Chess. Her gaze is unflickering.

  Charles knocks him back.

  They are all three amazed.

  “They do that to them,” Royal says, his jaw trembling. “It’s an experiment.”

  “She’s not them. She’s us.”

  Roy shrugs.

  “You don’t own her,” his brother says. “Just because you patched her up.” But in hospital, they will, he thinks. They own them after a while—Lexie’d said. “Professionally, of course.” But they really do, you know. They own them. I wasn’t up to it. It takes such arrogance, Charles, to think you know what’s good for them. I flunked.

  “You all play Chess’ game,” Royal says sullenly.

  “You’ve been playing it too, Roy.”

  Half-smiling, Royal looks up at him. Exactly as he did when he was in the hospital—looking up from his hamster, which was running in dizzy circles in the maze Charles had built for it. For little Roy.

  Remember, your little brother’s only six, only eight, only ten, his parents say in Charles’ ear. Never speaking of the foot.

  “Roy? I’m beginning to think we play yours.”

  “Charlie—” Reeny says. “Charlie … Listen. We could
all work in the hospital maybe. You and I could get jobs there. And stick around her, maybe.”

  He could, almost. Not quite. No, he can’t. Reeny would try, bless her, but be persuaded against it. Or be turned away. He knows who would do it, could. And be considered crazy for doing it, if need be. His mother would do it. And stand up to it. She would qualify.

  James—he heard her say once—what am I overqualified for?

  Chess is shivering. Unseeing. Like a statue coming to life.

  No. She sees Maureen. Direct.

  “I know I promised. I know.” But Reeny is stepping back, back.

  “What, Reeny? What did you promise.” She can promise, Charles thinks. Why can’t I?

  “We were going to live together. And have boyfriends. She says Ma puts me down. She said I could.” Reeny’s curly hair frizzes at him. “And I promised.” She whispers. “Never to let her go to a hospital… We swore it, Charlie. She’s afraid they’ll give her shock. She says it won’t help. She says she’s not insane enough … And that’s true; you know it is. She never says anything wrong. Crazy, I mean. Even about Lucy. Never. She only … well, you know.” A whisper: Acts it.

  Chess has stopped shivering. Her face is sad but not judgmental. Not of them. As if the world is listening over her shoulder but will never dream of answering. Her mouth is almost humorous.

  Reeny kneels to her among the paper scraps. “Chess—I’m so tired… I’m so tired, Chess.”

  But for once Maureen’s not going to cry. When you welsh, you don’t.

  Royal limps to her. “You’re all crazy.” He dumps the kit down beside her. “Here. You’re gonna need it.” He turns on Charles, staring up. Defiance turns his fair skin to boiled milk; his feathery eyebrows crinkle in knots. He knows what they think of him. That only Ma is fooled. “Well—what did they swear it in—blood?”

  Ohhhhh, Cha-arles. Reeny, from far off.

  From the floor, Royal gawps up at him. When hit, he falls lightly. The heavens don’t fall with him. Who’d have thought? When someone hits Roy. “You might have broken me.” His voice is holy. “You might have broken me.”

  Nobody moves to pick him up.

  He feels over himself, largely. Scuffles to his feet, paper bits scattering. Bends suddenly, spry little cricket in his jointed way. “Hey. Hey. Lookit this. It’s from Dad’s typewriter. His records. Hoo-oo. Father’s medical records. She’s been tearing them up. Now will you listen to me?”

  The scraps are on a familiar thin foreign paper, bluelined. Closely written though, unlike those sparse sheets to his mother. Letters to someone. He sifts the scraps, yearning. One says “—ear Cha—.” He can find only one fully legible. “What the Spanish” it says, in the old Hermes type. Yet there’s an identity to these bits of paper, a haze through the word-tatters, recalling instructions at times almost given him. An osmosis, between the ruled blue half-syllables, of feelings that almost spoke. “They’re from letters. To me. From Dad.”

  “And she tore them up.”

  Royal has his uses. Charles himself can’t say that to her. She can’t know how it must be for him. Those connections. They’re what she’s incapable of.

  It’s brought her back, though. He knows that desperate smile. Its satire unites the two of them. “Now you don’t have to worry.” The voice comes stifled but clear. “You can welsh.”

  He shakes his head, gathering up the scraps. “I’ll put them together again. Rocky’s mother does jigsaws with three hundred pieces in them.”

  “Humpty-Dumpty?” Chess shrugs.

  She sees round all corners, he thinks. Except one. Except whether or not she wants to die. He’s putting the scraps into a long envelope luckily found in one of his jeans-pockets. The envelope says Harvard University on it. Even there, will he find anybody as capable of certain connections as her?

  “It was Father in the hall. Wasn’t it.” The tissue-thin scraps cling to his rough fingertips. Several fall. He retrieves them. “When I came out in the hall.” He folds away the envelope. “He’s home.”

  She won’t answer him. Why should she? Why should she be answerable to any of us?

  “Father?” Reeny says it joyfully, but in the middle of a yawn.

  “Then it was him we heard after, wasn’t it? Coming in, then going out again? Going down to the dock … Charlie.” Royal’s voice compels. “Charlie, then he’ll catch them, won’t he. Those two.”

  “What two?” Reeny, on the floor, leans against Chess’ bucket. She’s tired, but back to what she was, tired in her own way. A sleep drunk. Since babyhood, found cuddled under stairs or bushes, in cellars, all sorts of places, some dangerous.

  “You know. Those two we saw go down there before.” Royal mouths it to him. That man and woman.

  “Why you whispering?”

  “What’s it you two know I don’t?” Reeny’s arms huddle her knees. Her head sinks to them.

  Chess lowers her eyes.

  “Boost me on the ledge,” Royal says.

  Nobody does. Evil would come of it. Reeny who might have, is asleep.

  The sun is up.

  Charles is standing with his back pressed against the far wall.

  A beautiful morning. People who live along the river often bother to say it. Paradise, the outsiders say to them. For your kids. They already know. Maybe it’s smug not to say it, maybe only shy. As it is with him, Charles. To voice even in the soft, tamed river-voice that people acquire here, what these trees, that river-sky, this shadow-mellowed road means to him. Will mean, wherever he goes. It’s a place of light, a place of dark. He closes his eyes to it.

  In the window, dead-center, will be the dock. Or what once was; we call it that. Only a wave of green land now, with some rotten pilings to swim against, below. To be warned against—each child. Himself at three, happily splashing. “They must swim,” his father says, bending a long young face like his own now, and in a tone still cherished. One of Ray’s last firm statements. His father’s statements are few enough; he’ll cherish them. In the commune, he’ll lay out the pocketed scraps on the table; eight heads will be better than one. All there will understand what he’s after. Having riddles of their own.

  It seems to him that yes, his mother’s the one responsible for having caged the family in a globe more personal than it should ever have been. His father was after all doing something wider in the world—even if he never seemed to know why. “Personal?—” she’d say, if taxed with it “—well, the world sure handed me a lot of it.” He knows her every reaction; her thousandfold words dimple his flesh like water-torture, knead his brain like dough. She knows the why of things; she’s been handed enough time to. He hears her sigh, as young Ray, his father, leaves the dock, to go back up. Treading water, she grasps him strong against herself. She taught him how to swim.

  More savage now, but each year openly tenderer too—she’ll get her way. Whatever it’s to be, he admires her for it. And means to shun all women like her. But not as James does. What he wants is—not a chick, but not a discoverer either. Some girl younger than him maybe. Who he can help.

  Not like Chess. People who say that—Rocky, good concerned pal, has said it—will lie.

  He opens his eyes.

  Chess is quiet on her stool, but not tranced anymore. Her nose is running; she licks her upper lip. Her skin has lost the fishlike elegance it had when they entered; she’s slipped her bandaged wrists down between her thighs. She’s sane. Is she meditating? Like him, she must know that the interpretation of her life to others—has begun. It’ll go on all her life now—that required interpretation. If she grants herself a life.

  Grubby as she is now, her aura dazzles him. Dilemma is her halo, shining from her. An impossible anti-saint, unable to be ordinary. So ugly-lovely it’s hard even for love to look at her.

  Royal’s watching him, sullenly. Let him. Shrewd as Royal is, what marks him as still a child is the way time slips by him. Maureen too. Restful to be with them, half in their sluggish cycle—but now it�
�s over. He can’t stay.

  “Charlie. What are you doing?” Royal sounds scared.

  Charlie is walking heel-toe, heel-toe, around the room’s periphery. Charlie is practicing his Hulot-walk, for the last time. Daringly, eyes closed. Old movies, black-and-white ones, how he loves them; they are childhood. They unfold like coffin-shaped newspapers, tombs of the forgettable, where all the corpses are live.

  Eyes open, he stops in front of Roy.

  “Boost me.” Royal whispers it. I want to look.

  They’re brothers. Do it. Even if evil will come of it.

  Done. Brother to brother at the window, Charles circles Royal’s waist with his arms. Comforting; comforted.

  There’s the dock. On it, two figures facing the sun.

  There they are. On the green ripple of riverbank which belongs to this house. Two naked figures with their backs to it.

  Whoever went down to the dock with Lexie hours ago has gone. These are his parents. No other man. No other woman. One’s standing. One is lying full length. From up here, the changing river seems to flow through them, making their dais tremble. The sun, not yet rayed, more a warm sweat from the east, tinctures both outlines to a glow, anatomizing each body with its yellow stencil. The tactile, green arching of summer frames them, naked but separate.

  Must be a painting like that, he thinks. Done in that near-far perspective which always extends just over the road which one can never cross. Sometimes it’ll be a perspective empty of humans. Sometimes, off-center in what is called the middle distance, will be just such a pair. Arrested in sleep or thought, in radiance. Or trudging the solemn colorings. Or running frantic before a furling cloud. Not a mother or a father—or not yet. Or not any more. Just such a pair, in the posture that is theirs. I have a picture of it in my mind.

  Maureen, waking from her doze, sees the two boys at the ledge, steals to their side. Makes a small sound, looking out.