Childgrave

by Ken Greenhall

  Overshadowing all of those thoughts, of course, was the intense pleasure of knowing that Sara was waiting there for me. She had written to tell me that I could come to Childgrave any time I wanted after New Year’s Day, and that I could stay as long as I liked, from an afternoon to forever. I decided to start with an afternoon—the second one in January.

  It was a cloudless day. There was no barrier across the road to Childgrave, and smiling people walked the streets of the village. They were the people I hadn’t seen before—people who didn’t look out of the ordinary except in their attractiveness.

  Sara was alone in the Golightly house. I told her I loved her and that she had lost weight. She lifted her sweater and showed me how her ribs made her skin glint in taut, curved ridges. I told her that I loved her and I put a ring on her finger. We didn’t tell each other anything very intelligible for a while after that. When I left the house, there was a patch of pale sunlight on the door, reflected in some circuitous way from ice on the surrounding hills. Sara’s left hand was against the front of the door. The ring, a dark ruby in an antique setting, tinted and dispersed the light, casting a redness across the brass of the ornamental door knocker—the child’s head. I asked Sara whether it was an omen.

  “No,” she said. “It’s merely beautiful.”

  I realized that, despite this lapse, I had begun to spend less time looking for dubious meanings in my experience and more time accepting the beauties of the moment.

  We arranged that I would return to Childgrave in two weeks. We would be married in the Meeting Hall, and Joanne and I would live with Sara and her mother.

  Sara thought it might be best if I didn’t invite anyone from the city to attend the ceremony. I thought it best not even to tell anyone where I was going to live. It would be hard to explain my secrecy, but not as hard as it would be to explain a lot of other things. My taste for the inexplicable was being indulged beyond its own moderate ambitions.

  Manhattan still held its little mysteries and melodramas, too. When I got back to the city that day, there was a black limousine parked in front of my building. I doubt whether a limousine had ever stopped on that street before, except at the demand of a red traffic light. And it seemed doubtful that a passenger car the size of that particular limousine had even been driven along that street.

  I was looking as casually as I could for some sort of tasteful inscription that might say who made the limousine, when its front door opened, and a classically dressed chauffeur (with gray gloves) got out and said, “Mr. Brewster?”

  I thought about issuing a denial, but my curiosity kept me truthful. I nodded.

  The chauffeur didn’t seem overjoyed to meet me. “My employer would like to have a word with you and wonders if you would join him in the passenger compartment for a few moments.”

  The employer’s employee opened the back door of the limousine and tilted his head at the employer, who was sitting in a space that looked as big as and more comfortable than an apartment I once lived in. The man was dressed in a charcoal-gray wool suit that was probably put together over a long period of time by several well-paid people who didn’t respect implements that had moving parts. The man wore a black hat that was related to a homburg. He said: “Hello, Mr. Brewster.” He took off his hat, revealing that his high cheekbones were matched by a high forehead. “Won’t you join me?” He wasn’t asking a question but issuing a polite command, in a tone that sounded as if it had been practiced for many years at board meetings.

  I settled in next to him and waited to hear some more commands. My host was sixtyish, and he was slender enough to have been emerging from a fast. At the moment, though, he was doing some paperwork on a collapsible rosewood desktop that was attached to the back of the driver’s compartment. He used his hands in an elegant, self-conscious way. I watched carefully as he put some papers into an attaché case, lowered the desktop against the front seat, and slid an upholstered panel across it. Mounted on the panel was one of the portraits I had made of Gwendolyn Hopkins. He could only have got it from someone in Childgrave. I looked back and forth between the man and the photograph a couple of times, wondering what the connection was.

  My host wasn’t one to be too direct about that sort of thing. He said, “I understand you are changing your address, Mr. Brewster.”

  I wasn’t given a chance to say yes or no.

  “I have some interest in the community you’ll be living in. Actually, I have many interests in it. I want to speak to you about two of those interests.”

  I noticed he said he wanted to speak to me rather than discuss things with me, so I let him speak.

  “One of my concerns is financial,” he said. “You might say that the economy of that community is exclusively under my control. Yes, you would have to say that. I supply the inhabitants with municipal services, supplies, and a subsistence income—which they may supplement as they choose. The people of the community, you see, are free of the need to concern themselves with externals. The arrangement, obviously, is distinctive. It could be misunderstood.”

  My new benefactor, who had been staring at the photograph of Gwendolyn Hopkins, turned to look at me. He seemed not to be inviting comment but just to be checking on whether I was paying attention. He continued. “Which brings me to my second interest: discretion. It has been decided that you are a person who is capable of discretion, Mr. Brewster. We would be chagrined if you failed to exercise that capability. More than that; people you love might become notorious or might even be thought criminal if discretion were not used. In short, Mr. Brewster, you are being offered a certain degree of opportunity and independence in return for your restraint and good sense. I hope you don’t disappoint the community. I’m sure you have understood me.”

  I wasn’t at all sure I had understood, but Mr. Mystery had obviously ended his warning or greeting or whatever it was. I thought of asking him who he was, but obviously if he had wanted me to know that, he would have told me. It did seem odd that although he was willing to take the chance that I would tell the world about Childgrave, he didn’t want me to be able to lead anyone to him.

  Even though my host wasn’t inviting questions, it didn’t seem right for me to leave without trying to ask a question. I doubted that I would get too many more chances to get information from this particular source. I said, “I know a little about what I will get from Childgrave. But I don’t understand what Childgrave will get from me.”

  The man didn’t hesitate. “Closed communities can become weak and complacent. It is worthwhile occasionally to introduce new attitudes: a bit of skepticism or some frivolity, perhaps. Many of us in Childgrave tend to be serious and unquestioning.”

  My host looked past me—presumably at his chauffeur, who was standing outside the door. The door opened immediately. My new acquaintance said good-bye to me. I got out of the car and watched as the chauffeur got in and drove away. It occurred to me that I could take the license-plate number and see if I could trace the car to its owner. But I didn’t really want to know who my visitor was. That kind of information might interfere with my eagerness to live in Childgrave.

  When I got upstairs, I tried to avoid Nanny Joy. I wasn’t ready to talk about the urgent business of breaking up the household. Not that I had any strong attachments to the apartment itself; I had never been especially fond of it. But I was leaving Nanny Joy, too, and I was more than fond of her. An added problem was that I was wondering how I could explain to her that I wouldn’t be inviting her to the wedding.

  I went off in search of Joanne, who turned out to be in the Anything Goes Room, throwing one of her Christmas presents against the wall. The offending present was a little computerized musical gadget on which you could compose tunes by pushing buttons. The computer would memorize the tune and play it back for you in characterless, outer-space beeps. I hadn’t expected Joanne to be entranced by it, especially
since I hadn’t quite been able to figure out how to work it myself.

  “I gather you’re mad at your toy,” I said. Joanne didn’t answer. She threw the gadget at the wall again. “Can’t you figure out how to work it?” I asked.

  “I can work it. But it doesn’t tinkle.”

  “Tinkle?”

  “Beverly Chapman has a music box that tinkles. This one beeps.”

  My daughter was an old-fashioned girl. Which was just as well, considering where her new home was going to be. It seemed like a good time to make the announcement. I sat down on the floor next to Joanne. “Sweetie,” I said. “Sara Coleridge and I are going to get married, and you and I are going to live with her in Childgrave.”

  Joanne lay down, with her back across my lap, and began to laugh. I lifted her up and held her against me. She smelled good, in a vanilla-extract sort of way. She said: “Will you make a brother for me?”

  “We’ll try.”

  Joanne displayed a shy grin. “Will you do intercourse like Ms. Abraham said?”

  I was reminded that there were several things about Manhattan that I could not conceivably miss—foremost among them, Ms. Abraham. I ignored Joanne’s question. “I have to ask you to do something for me,” I said. “You have to promise that you won’t tell anyone where we’re going. I mean, you can say we’re going to live in a small town, but don’t say the name of Childgrave. Will you promise?” Joanne gave me a fairly solemn nod. I had been thinking, though, that maybe the promise was coming a little too late. “Have you told anyone the name of Childgrave before now?” I asked.

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “Not even Nanny Joy?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, why don’t you go and tell Nanny Joy now that your daddy and Miss Coleridge are getting married in two weeks? But don’t say where.”

  Joanne started to run off, but she came back and said: “Two weeks isn’t long, is it?”

  “No, sweetie.”

  “Thank you, Daddy. Will I get to be chosen like Gwendolyn?”

  I pretended I hadn’t heard that question, but my stomach didn’t cooperate in my attempt at self-deception. It began to quiver. I sent Joanne off before she could ask her question again. “Go tell Nanny Joy that Daddy’s getting married,” I said.

  Joanne left, and I sat for a minute or so trying to get my stomach to settle down and to forget what I had heard. On the floor next to me was the musical gadget. I picked it up and pushed some buttons. It was still in working order. I decided to play a tune. The first one that came to mind was the one from the opera Orfeo—the music with which Amor announces that Euridice isn’t dead after all, and that the lovers will be reunited.

  As I was beeping, Nanny Joy came in and said, “Congratulations, Jonathan.” I got up and embraced her. She smelled good, too, but not like anything you would find in a kitchen cupboard. Joy once advised me that not everybody could look beautiful but anyone with a couple of dollars could smell beautiful.

  “We’re going to miss your good advice,” I said.

  Nanny Joy sat down on a workbench. “I’ve got some advice right now,” she said. “Don’t go live in that town, Jonathan. Can’t you and Sara live here?”

  “No, we have to live there.”

  Joy asked: “Will I see you at all?”

  “I’m not sure. I’ll try to get to town once in a while.”

  “But you’re not going to be receiving visitors in . . . what’s the name of the town?”

  I stared at the floor.

  “Shit, Jonathan, you can’t live somewhere that you’re afraid to give a name.”

  The floor had paint stains on it.

  Joy’s voice was getting louder. “I suppose you’re not even going to invite me to the wedding.”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, if you’re not going to show me yours, I’m not going to show you mine.”

  I could understand Joy’s attitude, but I didn’t know how I could make her understand the pressures that were on me.

  She said, “Think about it some more, Jonathan.” Then she went away.

  I thought about my situation for a few minutes, but I decided that there really wasn’t much to be gained from that kind of thought. I had made my decision, and I was pleased with it. As with almost any decision, there were aspects of it that weren’t ideal. But I wasn’t looking for the perfect situation. Some of the people in Childgrave might be looking for sanctity or the flawless life, but I wasn’t that demanding. My experience so far in my life had led me to believe that one could never be sure what a given act would lead to. I thought the least I could do was put myself in a promising situation and play the odds—never allowing myself to believe in the sure thing. I was convinced that life with Sara would give me the best odds for happiness that I had ever expected to encounter.

  Whenever fear and trembling attacked me during the next two weeks, I spent a little time watching Joanne. All her quirks had vanished. No more concern with invisible friends and raw meat. She had all the self-confidence of a beautiful woman, without the edge of egotism that sexuality brings with it. Five-year-olds are supposed to be easier to live with than four-year-olds anyway, but the change in Joanne was too dramatic to be just a matter of natural development. She was someone who had just picked up her visa to the Promised Land.

  I wrote to Sara every day, saying things that stimulated me a lot and that might have interested her, but that anyone else would probably have found ridiculous. She had a ridiculous announcement of her own to make: her ex-husband Martin and his Indian friend Roger were driving down to the city in a van on the morning of the wedding to transport me and Joanne and our belongings to Childgrave.

  As the days went by I found it more and more difficult to relax. Any sharp sound that originated within a couple of blocks of my apartment made my neck muscles contract, and I seemed to be losing control of my hands.

  Sara wrote to say that the wedding license would be waiting for me to sign when I got to Childgrave, but that I would have to bring a document proving that I had healthy blood. I stopped by a hospital clinic, where an exuberant intern tapped one of my veins. Up to that time, blood had never seemed very sinister to me. Even the sight of my own blood appearing unrequested from a cut finger looked more fascinating than frightening. But things had changed. As the hypodermic tube filled with the blackish liquid my arm began to twitch. When the intern tried to calm me, I accused him of being incompetent. Later, I decided I’d better find a way of distracting myself during the time that was left before the wedding.

  I found my distraction by doing some portraits of Nanny Joy. She was one of those people that the camera likes—a phenomenon I’ve never been able to understand or predict. Some people just photograph well. It has more to do with presence than beauty. Some people gain presence in a photograph, and others lose it. Joy Ory gained presence, even though she had a lot to start with. It was a solemn presence, probably because of the disappointment she was feeling over me. I also did some double portraits with Joy and Joanne. The results weren’t exactly festive, but Joy’s solemnity was softened by the obvious love she felt for my daughter. There was no sign of any spectral visitors.

  The day before Joanne and I were to leave for our new hometown, I made a sentimental journey through the city that, for most of my life, had seemed just right. I also stopped by to say good-bye to Harry Bordeaux in his office. Harry let me sit next to his desk while he manipulated his telephone. It was like sitting next to a grand prix racing-car driver in action. Harry used the hold button as if it were a gearshift control. Between speeches of optimism and promises of limitless wealth, as he handed things to and accepted things from his secretary, Harry found a minute here and there to speak to me. But the words he had for me weren’t too pleasant. His tone was light, but he came closer
than I had ever heard him to sounding morally outraged. He definitely didn’t like the idea of my taking Joanne to live among “haunted bumpkins.” Each time he spoke to me he seemed a little more outraged, and finally, while he was talking to a client, I got up, squeezed Harry’s forearm, and started out of the office. Before I got to the door, Harry said, almost in a shout: “You need time to reconsider, Jonathan.”

  I walked around midtown for a couple of hours, trying to analyze the reasoning behind my decision, but I didn’t come up with any new insights. I concluded that I had better drop the subject. But when I got home, the subject was forced on me again. This time it was accompanied by some terror. When I entered the apartment, it was dark and empty. I turned the light on and in my I’m-home-dear voice called out, “Joanne? Joy?” No answer. I prowled through the rooms, dodging packing boxes. On the kitchen table I found a note:

  Mr. B.—

  I’m giving you a last chance—helping you to think things over. Joanne is with me. Don’t get the wrong idea—I’m not kidnaping her or anything. I just took her away for a while so you can think. I’ll call you later and see what to do next. There’s no law against what I’m doing any more than there is about what you want to do.

  Nanny Joy

  I moved through the apartment again, not prowling this time, but rampaging. I kicked things that showed up in my path, and I went through my vocabulary of street language, picking out a choice item once in a while to direct at Nanny Joy’s note, which was crumpled in my hand. Who the hell was she to interfere in my life? Did I tell her she couldn’t wear tarty clothes and muck around with a Harlem preacher?

  Finally I collapsed on a sofa and started answering questions instead of asking them. Okay. Nanny Joy had some right to interfere. I had asked her to love and care for Joanne. She wanted to be sure that Joanne’s future was going to be happy and safe. But Joy was putting her own happiness ahead of Joanne’s. Should I give up Sara just to guarantee Joanne a conventional life? No. And then I realized I was rejecting an argument in favor of moderation. Jonathan had changed.